That new time religion.

ON SATURDAY, February 11, 1989, something of great moment was done that cannot be undone, or so it would seem. The Reverend Barbara Harris of the Diocese of Massachusetts was ordained a bishop of the Episcopal Church. Many cheered the event as a great stride toward the "full equality" of women in church and society. Others protested it as a "blasphemous fiction" and a fatal blow to hopes for reconciliation between Anglicanism and Rome. The disputes swirling around this development are theological, pastoral, ecumenical, cultural, political, and personal.

Taking the last consideration first leads to all the rest. It is agreed by all sides that a man with Barbara Harris's qualifications would never have been considered for the episcopate. Ordained a priest eight years ago, she has slight pastoral experience, no formal theological education, and indeed no earned degree from any college or seminary. Her experience has been as an activist and publicist for radical causes. This experience, plus her being female and black, is deemed sufficient qualification to elevate her to the episcopate. Nothing could so clearly signal the subordination of the theological, pastoral, and ecumenical to the cultural and political in the Episcopal Church. Those who complain that what happened in Boston has everything to do with sexual politics and little to do with theology may be missing the point. They fail to appreciate the degree to which sexual politics has become the dominant theology in some of our churches.

With an effort at balance that was almost painful, Newsweek recently surveyed the feminist insurgency in several churches. The feminist theologians of "women-church," the article makes clear, are nothing if not candid in declaring their intention to transform historically recognizable Christianity into the maternal cult of the "God/ess." Elizabeth Achtemeier, a dissenting biblical scholar at Union Theological Seminary in Virginia, describes the women-church movement as "a new religion." Hers is a conclusion hard to resist. In the face of the feminist juggernaut, even proximate orthodoxy is a posture of dissent and defiance in many American seminaries, both Protestant and Roman Catholic.

After 1976, when Episcopalians decided to ordain women, a woman bishop was mainly a matter of time. To question whether Barbara Harris is really or rightly a bishop is, inescapably, to question whether she was really or rightly a priest. About that, Christians are in disagreement, and many have yet to make up their minds. There is no doubt, however, that the fact and the manner of her elevation to the episcopate mark a new stage in the feminization and feministization of American religion. The long march through the institutions proceeds apace.