c. 1998 Religion News Service

CANTERBURY, England _ In a university courtyard tucked in among the rolling hills overlooking the historic spires of Canterbury Cathedral, nine women formed a ring last week, held hands and prayed for progress.

“Pray for those bishops who cannot yet embrace the ordination of women bishops and women priests,” one said to an approving murmur.

The circle included pioneers in the fight for women’s ordination in the Anglican Communion, Americans and English members of a cause fought for decades.

Ten years ago, at the last Lambeth Conference, a worldwide gathering of Anglican bishops, there were no women bishops. The big fight in 1988, something akin in volume to this year’s battle on homosexuality, was over whether women should be allowed to join the august men’s club.

This year, the 735 bishops gathering at the University of Kent for worship and policy discussions included 11 women: eight Americans, two Canadians and a New Zealander.

“I have a strong sense of being part of a tradition that goes back a very long time,” said Bishop Chilton R. Knudsen of Maine, one of the women praying for progress. “I feel like I’m a bishop among bishops, and I’m not that unusual. I feel like part of an unbroken chain. The church has always had divisive issues. If not women, it was slavery or political questions.”

In the weeks before the conference convened on July 18, there was unease in conservative ranks about the break with tradition. Fifty bishops said they would boycott worship services involving the women.

When Knudsen led worship services in Canterbury Cathedral _ the mother church of the communion and the seat of its spiritual leader, Archbishop George Carey _ on the conference’s second day, one bishop complained he’d been sandbagged. Bishop Noel Debroy Jones of England said he didn’t realize Chilton was a woman’s name until she began reading, and by then it was too late to leave.

Jones and a handful of conservative bishops also refused to sit for a group photograph later in the week, but, for the most part, the women bishops have enjoyed a warm reception. They can be seen shaking hands with conservatives from Africa and a few have spoken in key floor debates.

“The worst thing that has happened to anyone is they’ve had someone cross to the other side of the street,” said the Rev. Cynthia Black, president of the Episcopal Women’s Caucus. “But I would not want to understate the effect of the pressure on them. I know what it’s like to be always vulnerable and visible. In some ways, their every move is watched by either friend or foe.”

James Solheim, a spokesman for the 2.4 million-member Episcopal Church, the U.S. province of the communion, said it’s not entirely clear what has happened to make the meeting go so smoothly.

“I think everyone is surprised at how the issue of women priests and bishops has almost disappeared from the radar screen,” he said. “It’s clear that 10 years after the issue threatened to split the Anglican Communion, the ministry of women is accepted in more than half of the member churches.”

Liberals said the reception of women bodes well for the future. Perhaps at the next Lambeth, a homosexual agenda won’t cause nearly as much controversy, they argued.

Conservatives scoffed at that notion.

“I separate those two issues quite clearly,” said Archbishop Maurice Sinclair, a leading conservative from Argentina. “Homosexuality is condemned in Scripture, and the ordination of women is not.”

American conservatives, a clear minority who have allied themselves with conservatives in the developing world, where membership in Anglican Churches is growing rapidly, said the church has found its center. It might accept women in its ranks, but it will draw the line at homosexuality.

“Even though it is not according to our Apostolic heritage, I don’t personally see a problem in going to the ordination of women,” said Bishop Edwin Nyamubi of Tanzania, where there are no women priests. “The history of the church has vivid examples of good deeds performed by women. On the issue of homosexuality, I have no compromise.”

Such charitable comments toward women weren’t so widespread among conservatives a decade ago at Lambeth or 25 years ago in the United States, when the first women rebelled against the Episcopal Church and sought unauthorized ordination by supportive bishops. Today nearly 2,000, or 14 percent, of all Episcopal priests are women.

Catherine S. Roskam, suffragan bishop of New York, was the fourth bishop ordained in the United States and the first not to have protesters outside her consecration ceremony in 1995.

“The first wave is always sacrificial, and I think those women suffered a great deal more,” Roskam said in an interview here. “It wasn’t that I didn’t experience discrimination. It’s just that it wasn’t of the same order.”

At Lambeth, Roskam said, there has been a great deal of support. And there also were interesting moments with bishops, or their wives, who approached her tentatively and said things like, “I’ve never seen a woman bishop before.””I think the fact that they exist helps their cause,” said Bishop Edward Salmon, a conservative from South Carolina who is not opposed to the ordination of women. “When people exercise their office with integrity they witness to the cause.”

The women did their witnessing in a low-key way. All interview requests had to follow channels, and some of the women, most notably Barbara Harris of Massachusetts, consecrated just months after the last Lambeth as the communion’s first woman bishop, declined to speak with reporters.

Black, however, said that with all the focus on the first bishops, she was concerned it would be forgotten that women have yet to find a real leadership role in the church.

“There’s a parallel to what this country did with civil rights in the 1960s,” she said. “The church wants to say, `We did that already. We’re done with that.’ But there are still a great number of dioceses in the United States where women are not as acceptable as men.”

DEA END CHAMBERS