Oxford graduate Dr Alison Peden has been chosen as one of three candidates for the vacant episcopal see of Glasgow and Galloway in Scotland. If she is elected on 16 January, she will become the UK’s first woman bishop. It would in many ways be fitting for Scotland to be the first UK province to have a woman bishop. The US had the first one in the world, Barbara Harris, who incidentally was nominated back in the 1970s by Mary Glasspool, now lesbian bishop-elect in Los Angeles. Scotland and the US church go back generations. After the American Revolution, the Bishop of London, who had previously ruled over the American church as if it was a far-away London parish of little importance, refused to give newly-independent US Episcopalians a bishop of their own. So they went to Scotland, which duly obliged. The surprising thing about Scotland is that it has taken this long to put a woman on a shortlist after their General Synod voted in favour back in 2003.
Correction: The Bishops of England way back then couldn’t consecrate post-revolution American bishops because English canon law required ordinands to sign an oath of allegiance to the monarch (we Canadian clergy still do). They wanted to, so afterward they managed to get the canons changed in the case of bishops from outside the British Empire, and were then able to consecrate the next two American bishops. After that, the Americans could go on auto-pilot.
Lucky us. I guess.
I hope someone who knows Dr. Peden will comment. Her discussion of the second coming is encouraging, but her discussion of climate change is not. Can someone tell us, beside the string of academic qualifications and positions she has held, what she believes and teaches?
Katherine,
Ruth provides a link in the article to her sermon archive.
Natural consequence of female presbyters will naturally further wreck ecumenical efforts with the Catholic Tradition of Christianity in the East and West. ARCIC – ought discontinue to save CO2 emissions from the Anglican side.
Ian: English canon law still does require the Oath of Allegiance to the monarch. I was amused at my ordination that one of those I was being ordained alongside was an American citizen living in the UK, who nevertheless took the Oath of Allegiance to Her Majesty and Her lawful heirs and successors, along with the rest of us.
As far as I know, only three provinces of the AC currently have women bishops: the US, Australia, and New Zealand. That’s 3 out of 38. But Canada used to have one, before +Victoria Matthews went to New Zealand, so four of the Global North provinces have not only approved the idea, but implemented it in the last two decades. If I’m wrong and have overlooked a liberal province that’s already got a female bishop, I’d be happy to be corrected.
I fully expect Scotland, Ireland, and Wales to follow suit sooner or later, as well as the CoE (alas, probably sooner rather than later and most likely without any longterm protection for anti-WO Anglo-Catholics). Although I support WO myself, I’m sure glad that the ACNA has ruled out women bishops.
David Handy+
David, it’s extra-provincial, but you forgot Nerva Cot Aguilera, suffragan in Cuba.