Miami – As the first woman to serve as presiding bishop since the Episcopal Church approved female priests 30 years ago, Katharine Jefferts Schori is already facing a mutiny.
Jefferts Schori, who will be installed this weekend at the National Cathedral in Washington, D.C., starts her nine-year term during one of the most trying periods in the church’s history. Rifts over church teachings on gays threaten to divide the 2.4 million-member denomination.
About 10 Episcopal dioceses have rejected her authority, arguing her support for same-sex blessings and the ordination of gay clergy run counter to biblical morality.
In her first sermon after her election at the church’s general convention in June, Jefferts Schori angered the church’s conservative wing by referring to “Mother Jesus.”
And she faces more challenges abroad: Conservative bishops in the Anglican Church have pressured the archbishop of Canterbury, head of the 77 million- member Anglican Communion, to keep Jefferts Schori from attending the 2008 churchwide gathering.
But supporters say Jefferts Schori – an airplane pilot and former oceanographer – has the diplomacy skills needed to hold the church together.
“She’s an incredible listener and a person of very deep faith,” said the Rev. Ian Douglas, a professor at the Episcopal Divinity School in Cambridge, Mass. “She’s not one to come to a quick conclusion, but from her training as a scientist, she will take in all the data that’s presented.”
Bishop Leo Frade of the Episcopal Diocese of Southeast Florida said he believes Jefferts Schori will be able to broker a compromise between theo logical conservatives and liberals.
“She is of a liberal position, but I believe she’s willing to listen to the center,” Frade said. “One thing we cannot allow is that people say, ‘Well, she’s not my primate.’ She is the primate after this Saturday, like it or not.”
