Women Bishops? What's yor view?

[combust22]

A vote in the Church of England today will decide whether to allow women to become bishops.

Should this happen?

Good one Elephants

My view?

Welcome to the 21st century.

Lots of other Anglican churches already have women bishops

The US Episcopal Church has had women bishops for a long time. We also have openly gay bishops.

The primate (presiding bishop, so sort of like the Archbishop of Canterbury) of the US Episcopal Church is named Katharine.

cherrypi your first post has to be the best post I've seen on mnet for ages

A few posters on this thread have mentioned Katharine Jefferts Schori of the Episcopal church USA. Since she became Presiding Bishop the Episcopal church has continued to lose members in large numbers. She has also taken various congregations to court who wanted to be outside her jurisdiction and seized all their buildings. The legal expenses have cost the Episcopal church millions (they also recently had to sell their headquarters in New York). She has made her point but now the Episcopal church has a lot of empty churches while the congregations that built them and paid for them begin again.

Another phenomena is the lack of men attending church, Episcopal congregations have found they lose gender balance in their congregations when women are introduced as priests. This seems to be happening to the C of E.

That process was happening before she took office. Congregations were leaving over issues like the ordination of gay priests and bishops. The church has taken the position uniformly that it owns the land and buildings. It is not her doing alone, but church policy.

Congregations that had built and paid for their buildings were not allowed to buy them, they were sold to other Christian denominations and non Christian groups often at a lot less than the original congregation offered to buy them for. I won't pretend I know all the details but the Episcopal church seems to be breaking up. Maybe she was not personally responsible for the policy but she has been leading the church while all this has been going on (she took office in 2006) and I don't get the impression that she has been a peacemaker. I think it is sad. There now seem to be at least three Episcopal denominations in the USA, maybe you know more about it Scone?

The breakaway congregations are not part of the Anglican Communion; some of them are organized into associations that are described to be in the Anglican tradition.

And frankly, if men have left the Episcopal Church because of the ordination of women and gay people, I won't miss them.

If they keep leaving won't the women who would like an Episcopalian husband miss them?

Studies also show it is fathers who are most influential in a child retaining their faith into adulthood (surprisingly) so with less Episcopalian fathers the congregations will continue to shrink.

I'm surprised that you don't care the church is contracting and not growing.