Clerical life
Bishop to…
by Alice Goodman
ILLUSTRATIONS BY CLARA NICOLL
My first experience of bishops was my mother yelling at one of them over the phone. He was the Episcopal bishop of Minnesota, and I went to an Episcopalian high school where the headmaster had just fired the ice hockey coach for not turning in some of the team who’d mooned out the bus windows on the way home from a game. Since he’d already given the players a stern dressing down, the coach believed that further punishment would be unjust. He was the son of one of my father’s colleagues. The headmaster was the son of a friend of the bishop. What I recall best is my horrified amusement at my mother shouting, “I am not your ‘good woman’. Don’t you ‘good woman’ me!”
I’m thinking about bishops because the bishop of my diocese, Ely, is heading north this summer. He will be the new bishop of Lincoln. This means that the Diocese of Ely Vacancy in See Committee is moving into gear. This committee is made up of both lay and ordained people and will be preparing a description of the diocese and its mission and ministry, the difficulties—these are called “challenges”— it faces, and what kind of a bishop they hope we’ll get. They will be deciding whether to express a view as to whether the next bishop of Ely will ordain women. They will decide if they want to make this, and the rest of the Statement of Needs, public or keep it confidential.