By Sarah Condon
At some point in the last year I received a very kind email asking me to put my name in for bishop. Someone I did not know had nominated me. It was flattering and terrifying. I have been ordained for about 30 minutes (or since 2013). I have never been a rector. I have never handled major conflict in a leadership role. And I do not like hats. So, I emailed back with a polite No, thank you, and I believed that would be the end of it.
Moments later, I received an email back that said, “Well, let us know if you think of anyone.”
And I thought, “That’s what I say when I need to hire a magician for my kid’s birthday party.”
That is not how we pray for the Holy Spirit to call bishops.
In the months that followed there has been some big news about the all-women slates we have seen for bishops’ elections. And I am beginning to wonder if my nomination had less to do with my skill set and more to do with my ovaries.
We would be foolish to not acknowledge that these slates are a response to the cultural moment. In the wake of #MeToo and the Roman Catholic Church’s sexual misconduct cases, it makes a whole lot of sense to want women to be in charge. Men have run the joint for over a millennium — obviously.
Women’s leadership brings tremendous value to the table. Generally speaking, we are more collaborative, better able to think outside the box, and proven to be better listeners. These are certainly wonderful qualities to have in a bishop.
And as a clergywoman, I find it encouraging to see women taking the lead. I am a priest and the wife of a priest. In our household, when we talk with our young children about our role as pastors to the church community, we always mention that our bishops are pastors to us and to our family. I love seeing women in this profoundly important role.
Yet these slates for the episcopate and the collective excitement about them make me nervous. I am worried that these women are the next project intended to fix the Church. It feels as though the expectations are nearly messianic. And no matter how adept our unique giftedness is, we are not the Risen Lord.
I grow nervous when people are overly excited about women in ministry. I am here to do the work of the gospel, not to be the church’s latest project. I am here to pastor people, not to be Jesus. And when I see a line of all-women candidates I begin to wonder if the collective church has decided that lady bishops are a good way to fix everything.
Spoiler Alert: We will not fix everything, especially because these women are not inheriting a well-oiled machine. In fact, the church is being handed to women’s leadership at its absolute worst. Our national attendance numbers are staggeringly bleak, and our clergy are desperate for solid episcopal leadership. We would be remiss not to admit that this all feels a bit like “Let’s let the girls try their hand at it.”
Women often do our best when given the worst. For better or worse, this is how women tend to come into leadership positions. We are typically trailblazers on paths that have been neglected or misused. That is most certainly the case right now, and I do believe that the Lord makes a way out of no way. I am hopeful for my sisters newly called into this tremendous responsibility.
In the wake of TLC’s article on recent slates, there was an outcry that this was not even a thing we should be talking about. People commented that we should be used to women bishops by now and that this should not really even be news. This is the devil prowling like a lion.
The worst thing we could do right now is to say that we should not be talking about these slates. There is a major tendency in progressive circles to proclaim everything new as normal. And the new things (or people in this case) suffer. Not to talk about it and to shame one another for having uncomfortable conversations is very dangerous for our church and for the very women we want to raise up.
We must continue to do the prayerful and difficult work of raising up candidates for episcopacy. I celebrate my sisters being called into the role of bishop. But I do so with fear and trepidation for them. I pray the same prayer for them that I pray for myself and for all of those I know and love in ministry, but for these women, I pray it a little harder.
I pray that they can remember they belong to Jesus, who has completed the redeeming work that we could never accomplish ourselves. And perhaps most important, in the midst of all of the fever-pitch fanfare and crushing brokenness that comes with leading a diocese, I pray that the church can remember that too.
I’m pretty disappointed with this piece. First, it discounts the quality of discernment of the search committees hard at work in dioceses making the decisions so far. Second, it ignores the movement of the Holy Spirit in the thousands of lay and clergy delegates who prayerfully voted in multiple diocesan conventions to elect the new group of women bishops. Third, it downplays the outstanding qualifications of the powerful women who have won these elections. They won these because they were the kind of candidates they were – not, as the article implies, because men all somehow got together and said “let the girls clean up our mess.” How insulting to Jennifer, Carlye and all of the winners, and the thousands of people involved in the processes that put them there. They won because they are amazing, and kicked electoral butt (which includes getting nominated in the first place).
Most disturbing of all, the article ignores the reality that it is well past time for a major gender and ethnic realignment of the House of Bishops and whatever the reason, God is doing it NOW. My prayer is that of the 30 episcopal seats that have come open or are coming open in these next few years, that ALL of them will go to women, and as many women of color as possible. Not because (as the author unfortunately stereotypes) they are better collaborators and better out of the box thinkers and listeners, though some of them will be, but because they simply should have been there all along for their intellectual, spiritual and leadership strengths and structural impediments take a long, long time to come down.
Had they been there sooner, we almost certainly would still be in the mess we’re in (no gender could have saved us from the decline we’re experiencing) but the quality of our communal life together would have been richer, deeper and stronger for the diversity of gifts our sisters would have brought to the episcopate. The Holy Spirit is making that happen now, in God’s timing – and not with some contemptuous “aw, you go get ‘em, little lady” spirit. The author, by implying the latter, threatens to take some of the shine off the marvelous thing that God is doing. I’m not going there. Not for one second. And I hope nobody else will, either. While of course these new bishops are human with flaws and foibles, and thus in need of God’s constant help, they are are just too awesome to take anything away from them that way. That’s just subtly perpetuating more of the same old thinking.
The movement for election with a priority to include gender specificity and thought that the feminine is better able to handle current conflicts and a failing system regardless of prior service would do well to look to the example of PB Curry’s predecessor. Of note, the person never served as a rector or vicar and was the bishop of a diocese that consisted of two cities for a short time before taking the national stage. That diocese lost membership during that time…not unlike nearly all the others. Shortly after enthronement, she reinstated a sexual predator as a bishop, launched law suites and deposed bishops at whim. These last two seem to be more of “masculine” characteristics which are derided of the masculine not to mention the Biblical admonition about Christian suing Christian. Imagine the witness of letting go and using the millions spent on lawsuits to establish new or building established communities.