The Right Reverend Barbara Harris
First woman bishop in the Anglican communion whose appointment enraged traditionalists
THE RIGHT REVEREND BARBARA HARRIS, who has died aged 89, became the world’s first female Anglican bishop in 1989 when she was ordained as suffragan bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Massachusetts; her appointment caused a schism in the Anglican Communion and was controversial not only because she was a woman, but also because she was radical, black and a divorcee.
In 1988 the Archbishop of Canterbury Robert Runcie had told the General Synod that the Church of England would not recognise the consecration of an Anglican woman bishop, or any priests she might ordain. When Barbara Harris attended the Lambeth Conference that year as a reporter for the radical church journal The Witness, the Reverend Eddy Stride, chairman of the traditionalist Church Society denounced her presence as “a very serious challenge to many in the church”.
But it was not just her ambition to become a bishop that upset conservatives. Many were infuriated by her radical views on issues including support for the ordination of homosexuals and other gay causes, and her adherence to an “inclusive” liturgy which replaced “In the name of God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit” with the non-sexist “in the name of God, Creator, Redeemer and Sustainer”.
Although, at the time, most British Anglican bishops disapproved of her appointment, the local autonomy of the Communion’s 46 churches meant that nothing could be done to prevent it.
In the run-up to her consecration on February 11 1989 Barbara Harris received death threats. She refused to wear a bulletproof vest for the ceremony, though a contingent of police were assigned to protect her just in case.
As she arrived at the Hynes Auditorium in Boston, Harris was greeted with rapturous applause by the 8,000-strong congregation. However, when the presiding bishop asked if there were any objections to her consecration, to a chorus of boos the chairman of the Chicago chapter of the Prayer Book Society denounced it as a “sacrilegious imposture”.
As it had been endorsed by a majority of dioceses in the Episcopal Church, however, the consecration went ahead and the ceremony ended with the mainly white “Boston Brahmin” congregation rocking to the rhythms of black church music.
But the attacks and threats continued. “I could be a combination of the Virgin Mary, Lena Horne and Madame Curie, and I would still get clobbered by some people in the Church. That’s just the way it is,” Harris said in 1989. “Nobody can hate like Christians,” she recalled later, about the letters she was sent.
Over the years a number of protest groups were established by Anglicans opposed to the ordination of women, yet her consecration opened doors for other women in the church, as one by one the provinces of the Anglican Communion admitted women priests and appointed their own women bishops.
In Britain, after a typically Anglican process of fudge and compromise, Libby Lane became the first British woman to be consecrated a bishop when she was appointed to the suffragan see of Stockport in 2014. Over the next four years almost half of new bishop appointments in the Church of England were women.
“That’s why the people who protested did so,” Barbara Harris observed. “They knew that if one woman was consecrated, there would be no stopping us after that.”
One of three children, Barbara Clementine Harris was born in Philadelphia on June 12 1930 to Walter Harris, a steel mill labourer, and Beatrice, a pianist who played the organ and directed the choir at an Episcopal church in the city’s black Germantown neighbourhood.
From Philadelphia High School for Girls, Barbara Harris attended the city’s Charles Morris Price School of Advertising and Journalism. In 1949, aged 19, she got a job with a local public relations firm. By the time she left in 1968 she was the company president. She then took a job at Sun Oil as a community relations consultant, soon becoming head of its public relations department.
In the early 1960s Barbara Harris moved from her local church to the Church of the Advocate on the north side of Philadelphia, where the rector, Paul Washington, was a well-known political activist. She became involved in campaigning for ethnic minority and women’s rights, marching with Dr Martin Luther King, registering voters in Mississippi and working for radical organisations.
In 1974 she was invited to be the cross bearer at the ceremony at her church when the first 11 women were ordained priests in the Anglican Communion – two years before the Episcopal Church officially allowed women’s ordinations.
Soon, she herself began to feel called to the priesthood and took seminary classes in the evenings and weekends. She was ordained a deacon in 1979, and a priest in 1980. She also served as a volunteer prison chaplain and in 1984 she was appointed executive director of the Episcopal Church Publishing Co and publisher of its magazine, The Witness.
In editorials, she railed against apartheid in South Africa, US aid to Contra rebels in Nicaragua and discrimination against lesbians and gays.
By the time Barbara Harris attended her second Lambeth Conference in 1998 the focus of debate had moved from women to gay clergy. While some attendees still refused to acknowledge her as a priest, the balance of power had shifted towards moderate evangelicals prepared to go along with women bishops, but strongly opposed to openly practising gay clergy.
An inveterate smoker, Barbara Harris drove a BMW, took holidays at a condo in Cancun, Mexico, and had a reputation as an excellent cook. She retired from her position as suffragan bishop in 2003. The same year she supported the election of Bishop Gene Robinson, the first openly gay bishop in the Anglican Communion.
Her marriage to Raymond Rollins ended in 1963 after three years. They had no children.
The Rt Rev Barbara Harris, born June 12 1930, died March 13 2020