Australia: Two female bishops in 10 days
Stephen Crittenden interviews Dr. Patricia Brennan on Australia’s first female Anglican bishops. Brennan is former President of the Movement for the Ordination of Women:
Stephen Crittenden: Well indeed in your comments when you spoke in Perth the other night, I’m told that you made a very interesting point, that Sydney Anglicanism has been in fact marginalised and made even irrelevant by its continuing opposition to the leadership, the headship of women, and that this is why the Sydney Anglicans have put so much energy in recent years into forging overseas alliances, particularly in the Third World.
Patricia Brennan: Well how are they going to have an impact on Lambeth? I mean there’s military power, there’s demographic power and there’s moral power. I mean the demographic power they can show now is a statement that four primates who represent 30-million Anglicans are going to have a –
Stephen Crittenden: And this is the African Primates.
Patricia Brennan: Yes. I like it that they say Uganda, Kenya, Rwanda and Sydney. I saw Sydney coming out like a kind of a nation in itself.
Crittenden also interviewed Canon Barbara Darling who this weekend will become Australia’s second female bishop:
Stephen Crittenden: Do you think that the set of protocols that have been worked out, and unanimously agreed to, which is interesting in itself, do they still perhaps leave women bishops as second-class bishops? Until you’re able to be a bishop without conditions, are you going to be a first-class bishop?
Barbara Darling: There were some conditions. I believe we are called to be bishops and we are going to be consecrated as bishops. There are certain protocols put there because there are some people who are not happy to have women in authority, and that’s sad, but it is a reality in the church today, and we need to be able to move forward and to accept each other, and this is a way we can move forward. I’ve received letters of support from people who are opposed to women in the episcopacy and yet can see there is a genuine call and that God is calling women to this. They will be praying for us, even though they may not be able to accept the authority that is there at the moment. They may change, they may not.
Meanwhile, Thinking Anglican is covering the latest in the Church of England:
The House of Bishops takes a position to move ahead with historic reforms (this post has received 68 comments to date)
Petitions in support of women as bishops Petitions opposed