Dunedin Consecrates First Woman Diocesan Bishop; American Visitors Comprise Largest Visiting Delegation
Episcopal News Service. August 7, 1990 [90198]
Julie A. Wortman
The Anglican Communion entered a new era on June 29 as the Church of the Province of New Zealand ordained Bishop Penelope Jamieson as the first woman to head a diocese in ceremonies incorporating the province's growing commitment to women and country's Maori culture.
For the first time the historic episcopate was passed on from one woman to another as Bishop Barbara Harris, Massachusetts's suffragan, joined her brother bishops in the laying on of hands, a sign of the apostolic succession.
Wearing a stunning blue-silk patchwork vestment sewn together by a group of Dunedin women and designed to symbolize the Annunciation, the English-born Jamieson, 48, was made seventh bishop of Dunedin in a service that packed this university city's picturesque cathedral to capacity with nearly 700 people. But Jamieson's consecration attracted sparse international attention and displayed none of the fanfare and little of the controversy that accompanied Harris's much larger Boston consecration in 1989.
New Zealand's media played up the fact that Dunedin's Roman Catholic bishop, Leonard Boyle, with whom Jamieson is on good terms, declined to attend Jamieson's ordination because of his denomination's official position on the ordination of women.
In addition, Bishop Whakahuihui Vercoe, New Zealand's Anglican bishop to the Maori, refused to attend the ordination. He said his people still needed "time and space to reflect on and define" the role of women in the church and in Maori society. However, Maori women presently serve in the church as priests, and Vercoe indicated he does not object to Jamieson's ordination theologically or canonically. Jamieson said she respected Vercoe's views.
Despite Bishop Vercoe's absence, the local Maori played a key role in the ordination service. As Jamieson's procession entered the rear of the cathedral, a 92-year-old Maori woman cloaked in ceremonial feathers slowly backed down the aisle before the diocese's new "mother-in-God," calling her into the sacred meeting place, the place where in Maori tradition only truth can be spoken. She cried, "Bring your mother under the umbrella of the Almighty!"
In the chancel, a young Maori cried back in the same tongue, "This is your family!" Following Maori tradition, Jamieson was accompanied down the aisle by about 30 friends, parishioners, and colleagues from her home in Wellington who were there to support her as she was drawn into the chancel by this compelling call.
Outside, nearly 20 Roman Catholic women waved placards reading "Yippee! We are for Penny!" and "Congratulations, Penny" on the cathedral's steps. In an interview before the service, Jamieson indicated that dealing with the pain of women in the church would be a special focus of her ministry. "I'm most interested in working at the ragged boundaries of the church, places where churches sometimes alienate," she said.
Jamieson came to New Zealand in 1965 from the United Kingdom when she married Ian Jamieson, a lecturer in medieval English at Victoria University, from which institution she also holds a doctorate. They have three daughters, aged 14, 21, and 22. Jamieson was ordained a priest in Wellington in 1983. At the time of her election last November, she was vicar of Karori West with Makara, in Wellington, where she had been serving since 1985.
Jamieson's ordination attracted strong representation from England and Australia, two provinces of the Anglican Communion where women can be ordained to the diaconate and where supporters of women's ordination are working hard to win approval for their ordination to the priesthood. The Rev. Catherine Milford, moderator of England's Movement for the Ordination of Women, said Jamieson's ordination gave "great hope to God's new community of women and men."
The U.S. delegation was the largest from another country and included, in addition to Harris, Bishop David Johnson, Massachusetts's diocesan, and the Rev. Canon Nan Peete of Atlanta. There were also representatives from the Episcopal Church staff and the Diocese of Newark.
But the day belonged to the women of New Zealand, who held an unscheduled demonstration in support of a greater leadership role for women in their province, where women have been ordained priests since 1977. The New Zealand church includes Polynesia and has about 800,000 members. Dunedin is the province's sprawling, southernmost diocese, with 30 scattered parishes.
In the demonstration, 20 women priests and lay women stood in the center of the cathedral singing a familiar Celtic blessing that ends, "May God hold you in the hollow of her hand." Jamieson joined in the benediction.
As the women enclosed Jamieson in their own circle, presenting her with a carved wood staff, the congregation rose to its feet in what was for New Zealand's Anglicans an uncharacteristic outburst of applause. The next day, Jamieson remarked, "It's been a strange time for us all, I think. Still, perhaps the one pinching herself the hardest is me!"