I had a conversation today which made me rethink keeping quiet about all that I know from life’s experiences.
As human beings we seem to need to live a “lets pretend life” rather than one in truth.
This is a story most people who knew what happened have either benefitted therefrom or …….
Some years ago, I believe it was 1988, the claim was made that the Episcopal Church elected Barbara Harris as its first black female Suffragan Bishop.
That is the story told publicly. What actually happened is something altogether different.
Barbara Harris was never truly elected Suffragan Bishop. Her “election” generated a lot of hate mail. Some of it legitimately what we think of when we think of hate mail under such circumstances – some of it from people who knew what happened and who were moved to send mail ogbecting to Barbara Harris’ claimed election.
At the church conference which she attended and was nominated – there was a sports event happening on the outside to which many of the people who would be voting wanted to attend. Things ran on and it looked as though they would not be able to attend that particular event. What stopped them was the upcoming eledtion of a suffragan Bishop of the diocese.
It was decided, by the majority of those in attendance, that there would be a pause in the conference at that time and those who wanted to would go off to the sports event and when they returned the voting for Suffragan Bishop would take place.
That is not what actually happened. As soon as those going to this sports event left the building the very small group that stayed behind ,especially for this purpose, gathered together and in spite of having agreed to wait they went ahead and voted Barbara Harris in as Suffragan Bishop of Massachusetts.
When the entire conference regathered after the sports event they discovered the voting had happened – in spite of an agreement to the contrary- and Barbara Harris had been elected Suffragan Bishop by a small group led by Carter Heyward.
For whatever reason – to keep the peace; to save face; to not want to take on a public fight that might damage the reputation of the church, the results of that illegal vote were kept and Barbara Harris was installed as the first Black Female Suffragan Bishop in Massachusetts in spite of the way she was “elected.” There were lots of bad feelings for quite some time. Most, however, decided not to let this embarrass the church and moved on.
