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Eighteen of the 24 female bishops attended the Lambeth Conference this year (retired and part-time bishops were not invited), including 12 women from the Episcopal Church. Of the dozen, four—Bishop Chilton Knudsen of the Diocese of Maine, Bishop Cate Waynick of the Diocese of Indianapolis, Bishop Catherine Roskam of the Diocese of New York and Bishop Geralyn Wolf of the Diocese of Rhode Island—have now attended two Lambeth Conferences and can offer insights into what has changed since 1998.
Just two years ordained to the priesthood, Episcopal Women’s Caucus President Elizabeth Kaeton attended the Lambeth 1998 and also has taken note of significant changes. The Episcopal Women’s Caucus has been on the forefront in the campaign to open all orders of ministry to all persons, regardless of gender.
“In 1998, the level of violence was palpable. I rarely felt safe here. This is a very, very different environment 10 years later. There is still anger; passions still run deep, positions are still firmly entrenched on both sides, but the violence isn’t here,” Kaeton said.
“There has clearly been some progress. It is not what I call fantastic success. I don’t think 24 is an impressive number. And of the 24, most women are bishop suffragans, so they don’t yet have the full authority in the councils of the Church. We still have many, many miles to go before we sleep, but at least that there has been some progress gives me hope.”
“This is a much better Lambeth in terms of general atmosphere about women,” said Bishop Knudsen. “Some people are still cool—who don’t make eye contact and who do the equivalent of walking across the street to the other side, but I have a hunch those are people who have just never had the experience [of seeing women as bishops] in any way, shape or form.
“For the most part, 95 percent of the reactions are comfortable, friendly and curious,” she said. “Lots of people say ‘I can’t wait until we have women bishops in our area,’ not just the English, but in other parts of the communion including Africa and Asia.”
Knudsen gave the Archbishop of Canterbury significant credit for placing a number of women in leadership roles during Lambeth 2008. She also noted his commitment to gender-sensitive language throughout the conference.
“This never happened at Lambeth ’98,” Knudsen said, adding that inclusive language then was actually a source of awkward humor 10 years ago.
“We are not the talking frogs here the way we were 10 years ago when people would point and say ‘Oh my Gosh; there’s one,’” recounted Bishop Waynick during the 2008 Lambeth Conference. “Now when many of the women here see a purple shirt and collar on one of us, they will come up, shake our hand, smile and sometimes want a picture.
“I didn’t know this at the time, but [in 1998] I was the first woman bishop to speak in a plenary session as a bishop ever,” Waynick recalled. “There were bishops in the crowd who called out ‘you should be home having babies.’”
Although she was not present in 1998, Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori mentioned at a Lambeth 2008 press conference that the incidents of cat-calling in 1998 were well-known and sadly remembered.
“Ten years ago, when we went to the Cathedral for the opening liturgy, we wore our purple cassocks because there were bishops who absolutely refused to march in a procession with women dressed as bishops. We wore our purple cassocks for the big group picture for the same reason. Without discussing it with one another, all the women brought our rochet and chimere so that we could take a [women’s] group picture afterward,” Waynick said.
Bishop Roskam noted that similar precautions to guard the feelings of those who cannot accept women as bishops did not occur this year.
“This time, that didn’t happen and I have been treated very collegially,” she told Episcopal Life Media during the conference. “I feel very ordinary.”
 Christina Rees, chair of WATCH (Women and the Church), the group that helped bring about the approval of women bishops in the Church of England on July 7, has been more than a casual observer over the past two decades as women have gained a slow acceptance in all the orders of ministry. She tells the story of walking up on Barbara Harris in 1988, who attended Lambeth even though her consecration occurred the following year. Rees thought Harris appeared terrified and could not imagine that Harris enjoyed the conference.
Rees’s personal experience of the women bishops at the 1998 Lambeth wasn’t much different.
“As 11 among 800, they really stuck out. It felt as if they were barely here, trespassers in an otherwise male event,” she said. “They moved around in a shoal of themselves.”
This year, however, the presence of women as bishops felt much more solid, Rees observed.
“They somehow have a bigger presence. There is a sense that this is their conference as well, that they are not trespassing. The confidence and inner authority [is apparent],” she said. “They look happy; they look relaxed; they look welcome. And it is less like they might blow away.”
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