From the Washington Times-
The Rev. Mary Glasspool, an Episcopal priest who commutes daily from Annapolis to her office at the Baltimore-based Episcopal Diocese of Maryland may be on the verge of a much longer journey.
If she's elected this weekend in an election for two suffragan bishops in the Episcopal Diocese of Los Angeles, she would be the second openly gay bishop in the worldwide Anglican Communion.
The first is New Hampshire Bishop V. Gene Robinson. His 2003 election has been the wedge that split the Communion into conservative and liberal camps and caused roughly 100,000 Episcopalians to flee the church.
I'm not expecting quite that amount of fireworks should Ms. Glasspool, 55, be elected, but ever since the denomination voted last summer to allow more gay bishops, there's been this informal race among dioceses to see who can be first.
Clergy in the Los Angeles diocese tell me that she's got a decent chance because her executive experience in Baltimore assisting the bishop and mentoring clergy ranks her above the other five candidates for the two jobs.
She is the daughter of an Episcopal priest who opposed women's ordination (must have been an interesting father-daughter tension there), and she was rector at St. Margaret's Episcopal Church in Annapolis during the 1990s where it was a "don't ask, don't tell" situation about her homosexuality. Ms. Glasspool's partner Becki "was invisible as far as the parish was concerned," she wrote sadly in her bio.
More here-
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2009/dec/03/episcopalians-eye-gay-bishop/
No comments:
Post a Comment