Australian Church to Consider Women Bishops
Episcopal News Service. September 28, 1998 [98-2232A]
The General Synod of the Anglican Church of Australia has called for the preparation of draft legislation for women bishops. The draft, together with a discussion paper, is to be ready by the end of 1999 for circulation around the 23 dioceses of the Australian Church. A seven-member working group representing a cross-section of views in the church has been named to assemble the materials needed to write the papers.
Only three provinces of the Anglican Communion now elect women to the episcopate-the Episcopal Church in the USA, the Anglican Church of Canada, and the Anglican Church in Aotearoa/New Zealand/Polynesia. Eleven female bishops participated in last August's Lambeth Conference.
The only other province that is moving towards women in the episcopate is the Church in the Province of Southern Africa.