The Bishop

   In honor of International Women's Day, I'd like to introduce you to a pioneering woman that I have just "met". The word met is in quotation marks because I didn't see her or become acquainted with her in person. I actually will never get to meet her because she died on Christmas Day in 2012.  Through the wonders of technology I discovered her and became acquainted with her.
   Her name is Jane Holmes Dixon. She was the Episcopal suffragan Bishop of Washington and served as Bishop of Washington pro tempore for a year. She was the second woman to be consecrated as a bishop in the Episcopal church. This fact was the original one that caught my eye and made me want to learn more about her.
   She was born in Mississippi in 1937. She went to college in Nashville and graduated. She married and three years later she and her family moved to Washington, where her husband worked in the Justice department. She taught school in the Washington suburbs.
   Once her children had grown she enrolled in seminary and got a master of divinity degree. She was ordained a priest in 1982 at age 45. Ten years later she was elected suffragan bishop of Washington. A year later she earned a doctor of divinity degree.
   Things did not go smoothly when she was a bishop. The church had only started ordaining women to the priesthood in 1976, There were still several conservative congregations and rectors who refused to acknowledge her position. Candles and linens were removed from the altars and prayer books were removed from the pews. In one parish she was denied entrance to the sanctuary by a rector who refused to recognise her as a bishop. She preached on the church basketball court instead.
   After her retirement in 2002 she became an advisor to a social justice group where she worked to help protect the rights of minority groups and women. This was something she had done while she was a bishop, speaking about inclusiveness in the church. She became acquainted with discrimination during her youth in Mississippi. She felt the way to help those who had been discriminated against was to join the clergy. She was remembered as a woman of courage and conviction.
   She spoke out against hate crimes. She also officiated at the National Day of Prayer and Remembrance following the attacks on 911.
   I watched a couple of videos of her. She had a pleasant voice and manner with a lovely southern accent. To me she seemed to be the kind of woman that you could have a cup of tea with. I read that she was a mentor to other female church leaders.
  In a letter to the Washington diocese announcing the death of Bishop Holmes Dixon, the current bishop Mariann Edgar Budde wrote, "Called to serve at a time when some refused to accept the authority of a woman bishop, Jane led with courage and conviction, and sometimes at great personal cost." Another quote from the same letter, "'Jane is a person who has the courage of her convictions but the grace and humility to know that none of us can equate our ways with God’s ways, our thoughts with God’s thoughts,' said the late Verna Dozier, Jane’s longtime mentor, in the sermon she preached at Jane’s consecration."
  A fitting tribute to someone who deserves remembering on a day honoring women.
  Information for this column taken from obituaries in the New York Times, Washington Post, Pittsburgh Post Gazette and The Episcopal News Service.