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Katharine Jefferts Schori speaks |
T HERE WERE SPRINGER spaniels, Labrador retrievers, a Maine coon cat--and goats.
That's right, goats. When a reporter for the newspaper I edited at this month's Episcopal General Convention asked the seven nominees for presiding bishop about their pets, garbage-eating goats were mixed in among the dogs and cats.
"We kept goats for better than 20 years in Oregon," Nevada Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori told Center Aisle, the newspaper published by the Diocese of Virginia. The bishop's choice of domestic animals was not the only thing separating her from the otherwise all-male pack of nominees.
In a surprise to just about everyone, except perhaps to the bishops who were casting the votes, Jefferts Schori (who prefers to be referred to by her maiden and married names) was elected the first female head of a national church in the history of the Worldwide Anglican Communion. She will assume her new duties in November, leading a church of 2.4 million Episcopalians, who are part of a global communion of 77 million Anglicans.
The vast majority of Anglicans belong to churches that do not authorize the ordination of women as priests, much less consecrate them as bishops or elect them as presiding bishops.
Thus, Jefferts Schori becomes the latest woman to break the stained-glass ceiling at a time when her own church is among those pushing the envelope on gender-based issues, such as the blessing of same-sex unions.
But that unique status doesn't seem to give Jefferts Schori much pause.
At a news conference just after her election, as journalists prodded her about controversies in the church, Jefferts Schori told the story of her experience as a freshly minted Ph.D. in oceanography on a scientific voyage off the Northwest coast of the United States. At first, the captain of the ship wouldn't speak to her because she's a woman. But Jefferts Schori, stressing the importance of personal relationships over abstract gender issues, said the silence lasted about 15 minutes. The bottom line: We got over it.
For a healthy number of Anglican leaders, particularly those from Africa and the rest of the Global South, a key question during Jefferts Schori's nine-year term will be whether they can "get over it."
Already labeled a theological liberal in a church racked by divisions over issues of human sexuality, Jefferts Schori will be challenged at every turn to demonstrate her ability to build bridges. She already completed one such link at the convention, when she dramatically and successfully made an 11th-hour appeal for compromise on gay bishops.
Indeed, my guess is that this onetime student of octopuses and squids, this Stanford grad with an airplane pilot's license, this Catholic-school student turned Episcopalian, this avid runner who speaks fluent Spanish, this onetime goat herder, will get the job done.
I remember making mental notes three years ago, at the last Episcopal General Convention, about the impressive ability of a tall, lanky female bishop to make cogent, insightful comments in the midst of rambling debates in the House of Bishops. Even from the pulpit, she sounds like someone in quiet, intense conversation.
That sense of being a centered, rooted person apparently also impressed her fellow bishops, who elected the 52-year-old Jefferts Schori on the fifth ballot during the Columbus, Ohio, convention. Her personal and spiritual qualities made up for her lack of experience at the local-church level, and for the fact that she was ordained as a priest just 12 years ago.
With the elimination of the world's most desperate poverty as her top priority, Jefferts Schori and her husband, Richard, will soon be heading from Nevada to the Episcopal Church's national offices in Manhattan.
Her daughter, an Air Force pilot, and her son-in-law were among those congratulating her in Columbus. But so were thousands of other Episcopalians, stunned by her election on the 30th anniversary of the U.S. church's first ordination of women.
The most sought-after button in Columbus in the hours after her election was a pink one with a familiar message in an unfamiliar context: "It's a girl!"
ED JONES is editor of The Free Lance-Star. He can be reached at
Email: edjones@freelancestar.com or at 540/374-5401.
