c. 2000 Religion News Service
DENVER _ The Episcopal Church on Thursday (July 13) took the first step to reprimand three conservative dioceses that refuse to allow women as pastors, 24 years after the church approved women’s ordination.
The dioceses of Fort Worth, Texas, Quincy, Ill., and San Joaquin, Calif., have refused to obey church law allowing women to be ordained. While San Joaquin has moved toward the ordination of women, Fort Worth and Quincy say their theology compels them to restrict the priesthood to men.
A resolution overwhelmingly passed in the church’s House of Deputies _ comprised of 832 clergy and lay members _ criticizes the resistance in Quincy and Fort Worth and sets up a task force to push the two dioceses into compliance.
The 2.5 million-member church is meeting here through Friday (July 14) for its triennial General Convention to set policy and budgets. The women’s ordination resolution still needs approval by the 200-member House of Bishops to become official.
Under the resolution, the church will establish a committee to visit and talk with the three dioceses, with plans to force compliance by Sept. 1, 2002. The church will revisit the issue when it meets again in Minneapolis in 2003.
San Joaquin has moved grudgingly to accept women as priests since the church last met in 1997. The diocese has one woman priest, and a quarter of its 28 seminarians are women. While Fort Worth refuses to accept women pastors, it will refer women in its diocese to neighboring Dallas for ordination.
Episcopalians are not the only group dealing with women in the pulpit this year. While most mainline Protestant denominations welcome women as pastors, the nation’s largest Protestant church _ the Southern Baptist Convention _ last month passed a resolution limiting the pastorate to men.
For many in the Episcopal Church, women’s ordination is a non-issue after the church approved women clergy in 1976 and ordained its first woman bishop in 1988. But for the most conservative pockets of the liberal-leaning church, women’s ordination boils down to a power struggle.
Delegates from the three dioceses said it was unfair for the larger church to force an individual diocese to comply with a particular portion of church law. Nancy Salmon, a lay member from the San Joaquin diocese, said the “mean-spirited” resolution violated the church’s emphasis on a non-contentious year of Jubilee.
“This resolution makes the three dioceses feel neither loved nor included,” Salmon said.
When the worldwide Anglican Communion met at the landmark Lambeth Conference in 1998, church leaders allowed leeway for individual dioceses that did not want to ordain women. Currently, about half of the world’s Anglican churches ordain women.
The Rev. Charles Hough, a priest from the Fort Worth diocese, said the resolution violates the Lambeth agreement that “there is and should be no compulsion on any bishop in matters concerning ordination or licensing.”
Supporters, however, said the church has made clear its position on women’s ordination, and individual pockets of the church do not have the right to disobey when they do not agree.
“It is time we call our brothers and sisters in Fort Worth, Quincy and San Joaquin lovingly but firmly into compliance of the laws of this church,” said the Rev. Mary Glasspool of the Diocese of Maryland.
The three dioceses said the resolution sets a dangerous “new spirit of legalism” for one segment of the church to dictate policy to another. The dioceses said they were being unfairly “singled out” for judgment by the rest of the church.
Supporters said the renegade dioceses had brought judgment on themselves.
“These canons are mandatory, there can be no discrimination on the basis of sex in our church,” said Michael Rehill, a member of the Newark, N.J., diocese. “We have not singled them out. They have singled themselves out.”
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