A collection of views on this debated issue A stimulating collection of purpose-written contributions on the issue of women bishops. The Church of England is debating whether to admit women to the episcopate. Many churches in the Anglican Communion have already done so - or have said that they will but have not yet elected or appointed any women as bishops. This book argues the case for women bishops by addressing the significance of scripture and tradition, issues of authority, the need for change, as well as the place of bishops in the church and the world. Contributors include the first female bishop in the Anglican Communion, as well as a range of bishops, other clergy and laypeople, male and female, from Africa, the USA, Australia, England, Scotland, and New Zealand, from the Anglican, Methodist, Baptist, Orthodox and Roman Catholic churches.

Get to know the first five Black women to be elected diocesan bishops within the Episcopal Church. During this moment, with the #metoo movement, Black Lives Matter, and the increased feelings of division in our country, Black women clergy in the Episcopal Church have voiced a need to come together, believing that their experiences and concerns may be very different than those of other clergy. That need is answered here in This Band of Sisterhood. The five Black women bishops featured in this book can provide a compass for how to journey along these new paths. Jennifer Baskerville-Burrows, Carlye J. Hughes, Kimberly Lucas, Shannon MacVean-Brown, and Phoebe A. Roaf offer honest, vulnerable wisdom from their own lives that speaks to this time in American life. Both women and men will find this book invaluable in discerning how God might be calling them to use their own leadership skills.

While focusing on his core mission to preach the gospel worldwide, T.D. Jakes has seen many good people not spend enough quality time with family, friends, and God. They have gotten so swept up in the daily grind that they have failed to live the rich life that God desires for each of His people. In his new book, Jakes provides readers with strategies that will help them rejuvenate their life and turn their "busyness" into a "business." All readers-not just entrepreneurs-will benefit from Jakes' insightful advice so that they can use the days God has blessed them with wisely and finish each day strong!

"The issue of women's ordination still occasionally makes the news. The controversy over women Bishops in the 2008 Church of England synod is a case in point. Within the Roman Catholic and Orthodox Churches the struggle continues despite growing evidence of the full ordination of women to the diaconate during the first four centuries of Christian history. Yet it is in personal histories such as this one that the true nature of women's struggle with the Church to claim their full humanity becomes apparent. This is also a quintessentially South African story of a woman struggling against the multi-layered obstacles put in her way; sexual abuse, class prejudice, cultural chauvinism patriarchy and Apartheid have all played their part in trying to keep Nancy Charton from achieving her destiny, but like a rock, the mbokodo of the slogan, she has been weathered but not broken and emerged fully into her calling as a priest and canon of the Anglican Church in South Africa. This book charts Nancy's life from the moment of the calling by God in the garden of a miner's cottage on the Witwatersrand, through her painful growing years when she lost her faith, to her re-emergence into faith with a mission as a community activist, campaigner against forced removals, crusading academic and finally as a pioneering advocate of full ordination for women in the Anglican Church"--Publisher's website

Women Bishops and Rhetorics of Shalom: A Whole Peace argues that the theological concept of shalom offers a way forward for progressive Christians who want to advocate for social justice based on their faith in an increasingly globalizing world characterized by many faiths. To do so, the book considers the rhetorical leadership of three women bishops who are all “firsts” in important ways: Marjorie Matthews, the first woman bishop in any mainline Post-Reformation church, Leontine Kelly, the first woman bishop of color in any mainline church, and Katharine Jefferts Schori, the first woman to lead a national church in the Anglican Communion. This book is recommended for scholars interested in communications, religious studies, and gender studies.

The widely exposed transgressions of priests within the Catholic Church stunned the faithful and sent a new surge of energy through the progressive church reform movement in the United States. Despite the movement's growing profile, the world has only recently learned that Catholic women are the driving force behind reform. Good Catholic Girls is a lively account of these courageous women, as seen through the eyes of an impassioned journalist, Angela Bonavoglia. They include Joan Chittister, the Benedictine nun who refused to obey a Vatican order not to speak at an international conference for women's ordination groups; Mary Ramerman, ordained a Catholic priest before 3,000 jubilant supporters; Frances Kissling, whose fight for women's reproductive rights has shaken the Church at its highest levels; Barbara Blaine, a priest abuse survivor who created the nation's most powerful voice for victims; and Sister Jeannine Gramick, who built a pioneering ministry to gays and lesbians, despite Vatican orders to silence her and ban her work. Backed by supporters worldwide, these and other women are rethinking Catholic theology, changing the face of ministry, and resurrecting the lost lives of female church leaders. As Bonavoglia shows, the hierarchy ignores them at its peril.

A reasoned case for the ordination of women to the Roman Catholic priesthood, arguing that the ordination of women is the logical conclusion to all the recent work of Catholic theology about women.