Makes me wonder what the Rev. Geraldine Granger would say about this particular debate …
Eleven years after the Church of England first began ordaining women as priests, its governing body voted Wednesday to consider allowing women to become bishops. The General Synod vote, by a show of hands after a lively debate, was a victory for reformists over conservatives and evangelists at a time when separate disagreements over homosexuality have caused division in the church.
Since the church’s first female priests were ordained in 1994, reformists have argued it is illogical and unfair to bar them from the higher role. […] Opponents in the church’s growing ranks of conservatives and evangelicals believe there is no biblical precedent for women bishops, since Christ’s apostles all were male, and that it is wrong for women to have authority over men in a religious capacity.
Gerald O’Brien, a synod member, opposed the reform and said 1,000 British parishes have said they would not want women priests to replace the male ones they now have, given “significantly different beliefs” between the two sexes.
The Episcopal Church has a number of women bishops (the first was elected in 1988), and it doesn’t seem to have — well, that’s probably not the best argument to use with the conservatives, either.