Female Bishops on Church Agenda

As bishops from the African Methodist Episcopal Church met in Los Angeles this week, their newly installed president challenged the denomination, one of the world’s largest and most prominent black churches, to ordain women as bishops.

“I maintain we ought to elect a bishop who is a woman by the turn of the century or immediately after the turn of century,” Bishop C. Garnett Henning Sr. said in an interview. He said the church could act as soon as its convention next year, but certainly no later than the next convention in 2004.

Although the church does not officially bar women from the ranks of its bishops, it has observed a male-only custom since being founded.

Henning, who is the new president of the international church’s Council of Bishops and who serves as bishop of the 19th Episcopal District, which includes much of South Africa, is not alone in his wish for women in the episcopacy.

The Rev. Cecil “Chip” Murray, senior pastor of First AME Church of Los Angeles, said the time is long since past for women in the episcopacy. The church must move from being “a church of exclusion to one of inclusion,” he said.

“The people of the pew have come a long way,” Henning said. Some parishioners once opposed female pastors, but “we have just about obliterated that attitude.”