Bishop James O. Mote, 84; Led Protest Over Ordination of Women
Bishop James O. Mote, 84, who led his Denver congregation out of the Episcopal Church after it adopted a policy allowing women to become priests in the late 1970s, died of kidney failure April 29 in Indianapolis, his hometown.
Mote generated national headlines in 1977 when members of St. Mary’s Church, which he headed, voted by a two-thirds majority to secede from the Episcopal Church after it began ordaining women.
Dozens of other congregations around the country also seceded.
Mote went on to become a bishop in the breakaway Anglican Catholic Church, which he firmly maintained was the true Episcopal Church that adhered to the longtime beliefs of the denomination.
“If Jesus had ordained women,” Mote said, “he could have ordained his own mother.”
As a chaplain’s assistant in the Army during World War II, Mote saw action in the Battle of the Bulge and was awarded a Bronze Star.
He graduated from Canterbury College in Danville, Ind., in 1950 and graduated from Nashotah House Seminary in Nashotah, Wis., a year later. He was ordained as an Episcopal priest in 1952.
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