Word: bishopate
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There is no feminine for the word bishop in the Sesotho language. The word literally means "father." This was a bit dismaying to Vashti McKenzie when she arrived in Africa four years ago. After all, McKenzie, now 57, had just been elected the first female bishop in the history of the African Methodist Episcopal (A.M.E.) Church and been posted to its 18th district, which includes the churches of Lesotho, Swaziland, Botswana and Mozambique. Friends had warned that the African church was particularly patriarchal, and here was linguistic proof...
...Bishop McKenzie has a time-tested philosophy on combatting patriarchy. "For women, especially for African-American women," she says, "you always have to be better than men to get ahead." Assigned a 300-member church in a depressed part of Baltimore in 1990, she not only built the congregation to 1,700 but also worked with the state of Maryland to get 600 area people off welfare, save a public school and renovate a key local building. Her election campaign for bishop in 2000, following another woman's 1996 defeat, was unapologetically aggressive, featuring T shirts, buttons and campaign visits...
...handful of other church leaders have since echoed Archbishop Raymond Burke's declaration that Catholic politicians who vote against church teachings are unfit for the sacrament that more than any other symbolizes a Catholic's ongoing connection to the faith. At least one of those leaders--Colorado Springs, Colo., Bishop Michael Sheridan--has even suggested that unrepentant Catholics who so much as vote for a pro-choice politician should stay away from the Communion rail. Kerry meanwhile insists that he will continue to practice both his faith and his politics as always, and so the watch...
Pittsburgh, Pa., Bishop Donald Wuerl has recently asserted that "sometimes a single issue will be so important that it overrides a whole range of lesser issues." Yet many experts who confirm abortion's import insist that the issue does not impose lockstep political behavior on believing voters. The church allows believers commonsense, or "prudential," latitude in fitting doctrine to political action. That is not license to contradict teaching, but an acknowledgment of the delicacy of its application in the real world. In practice, says the Rev. John Langan of Georgetown University, prudence could translate into supporting Pennsylvania's pro-choice...
...Bishop graduated from Gettysburg College and attended Harvard Medical School. In 1968, he began to teach at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF), where he is now a university professor. In addition to his research, Bishop was won acclaim for his talents as an educator; in 1998, he was made Chancellor of UCSF...