Women Priests and Witches

May 27, 2015
by Fr. Dwight Longenecker

Church of England women priests have joined Episcopal Presiding Bishop Katherine Jefferts Schori at a conference with a witch and a man married to a Muslim man.

Ruth Gledhill reports here

A leading witch and herbalist shared a Church of England platform last night with other women religious leaders including the Presiding Bishop of the US Episcopal Church and Gogglebox tv vicar Rev Kate Bottley.

Helene Mobius, who heads the prison chaplain ministry of the Pagan Federation, challenged stereotypes of women at the event, the latest in the Westminster Faith Debates series at London’s liberal flagship church, St James’s Piccadilly.

One of the Church of England’s leading women priests, Rev. Lucy Winkett was there.

Rev Lucy Winkett, Rector of St James’s, said she hoped that women bishops would open up space for issues such as domestic violence to be addressed more effectively. It mattered not so much that women were bishops and priests, as “how” they were bishops and priests. The authority held by a woman will be held “differently” from that held by a man. “It won’t necessarily be held more nicely,” she warned.

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