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UK’s first female bishop leads peace prayer
UK’s First Female Bishop Leads Peace Prayer. Britain on Wednesday got its first female bishop in the 500-year history of Church of England, exactly a month after historic changes were made to the law to end centuries of male domination in the church.
London: Britain on Wednesday got its first female bishop in the 500-year history of Church of England, exactly a month after historic changes were made to the law to end centuries of male domination in the church.
The 48-year-old Reverend Libby Lane will become the new Bishop of Stockport, a post in the north of England that has been vacant since May.
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Lane has been the vicar at St Peter's Hale and St Elizabeth's Ashley in Cheshire since April 2007. She expressed her promotion "an unexpected joy," and lead a prayer for the victims of the Taliban school massacre in Pakistan as her first act as bishop.
"It is an unexpected joy for me to be here today," Lane said after being named in Stockport, a town outside Manchester in northwest England.
"It's a remarkable day for me and I realise an historic day for the church. I'm honoured and thankful to be called to serve as the next bishop of Stockport and excited, though not a little daunted, to be trusted with such a ministry.
"I'm very conscious of those recognised and unrecognised who have prayed and worked and struggled for this moment."
The general synod, the church's governing body, had voted to back plans for female bishops in July and formally adopted legislation on November 17 and comes 20 years after women became priests.
Lane was ordained a deacon in 1993 and a priest in 1994, serving her curacy in Blackburn, Lancashire. Since 2010 she has also held the role of Dean of Women in Ministry for the Diocese of Cheshire.
After being schooled in Manchester and then the University at Oxford, she trained for ministry at Cranmer Hall in Durham, according to her church's website.
Her interests include learning to play the saxophone, supporting Manchester United Football Club, reading and doing cryptic crosswords. Her husband George – a chaplain at Manchester Airport – is also a priest, and they were one of the first married couples in the Church of England to be ordained together.
The first women priests were ordained in 1994, but to date women have not been able to take on the Church's most senior roles.
Legislation to fast track women bishops into the House of Lords will be introduced to Parliament on Thursday.
Prime Minister David Cameron congratulated Lane and said: "This is an historic appointment and an important step forward for the Church towards greater equality in its senior positions".
He also said that the government would bring forward legislation this week that would allow women bishops to sit in parliament's upper House of Lords.
Female bishops were appointed in other Anglican churches around the world earlier itself. The first was appointed in the United States in 1989 and there are now more than 30 worldwide, in countries such as Australia, Canada, Cuba, New Zealand and Swaziland.
