Susan Bell to serve as diocese’s first female bishop
For the first time in its 143-year history, the Anglican Diocese of Niagara has a woman serving as its bishop.
Susan Bell, a Hamilton native ordained more than 20 years ago by the Anglican Diocese of Toronto, takes over as diocesan bishop today at the Christ’s Church Cathedral office on James Street North.
The Spectator spoke to the 51-year-old about her vision for the diocese and the period of change facing the church.
Tell me a bit about yourself.
I was born in Hamilton at Henderson Hospital on the Mountain. A little bit later, my family moved to east Hamilton around Nash Road. I was really heavily involved in the church. I actually grew up in the United Church and went to Stoney Creek United. I was also a singer and took lots of lessons and decided that was something I wanted to do for awhile so I went to England to study singing, which is where I became an Anglican because there’s no United Church in England. I met my husband, who is also a musician, there and came back to Canada and sang in the choir in Elora for a couple of years and then realized that this call to ministry that I had had since I was about 14 wasn’t going away.
You will be the first woman to hold the job. What does that mean to you?
I really hope that the fact that I am able and have been asked to do this ministry is an encouragement to other young women who are perhaps thinking about a vocation in the church. The fact that I have a big family — I’ve got four kids — and I’ve a wonderful husband who’s got a full and busy career; there are very few barriers these days, and it’s wonderful to make good on that, right? I was raised by a very strong woman. She was a single parent and she raised the three of us within the arms of the church. This feels like some kind of an outworking of that wonderful upbringing that I had from a wonderful strong, intelligent professional woman in my mother.
What are the goals you would like to accomplish as head of the Anglican Diocese of Niagara?
I think I’m going to have a fairly singleminded focus on renewal and mission. That’s something that has frankly characterized my whole ministry and my whole vocation. We’re in a new age and I know there’s a lot of hand-wringing in the ecclesiastical world about the fact that we are facing in some places numerical and financial decline. But I actually really believe we’re in a time of great opportunity and also great optimism.
What are some of the key challenges that the diocese is currently facing and what can be done to overcome them?
I suppose the first thing I want to say is any of the challenges that I name now are not challenges that are just felt by this diocese, they’re felt across the Western church. That’s both encouraging and it’s also daunting. Here’s the encouraging bit: I think that the Holy Spirit is calling us to a place of renewal. The reason I say that is just because it is across the Western church — it’s not the failure of any one leader or philosophy of leadership or theology or anything else. So, some of the challenges: the fact that we have an aging demographic, the fact that we have aging buildings, the fact that some of our buildings aren’t in the places where we’re seeing lots of settlement and building. We have a little bit fewer resources in terms of financial resources and human resources, but again as I say we’re in a period of renewal. The church has been around for a very, very long time — it’s not going to disappear on my watch.
You mentioned your passion for singing and your desire to study that. How does that passion fit into your work?
Singing is a large part of my own devotional life. I now have a commute and I quite often will listen to music that feeds my soul, and that can be anything from Mumford & Sons to Handel: Messiah. I like music that says something, that means something, and to me the things that mean the most is helping me live my faith.
(These answers have been edited for length.)