Ordained women in the Episcopal Church’s Province VIII will gather Sept. 28- Oct. 1, 2009, in Burlingame, CA, for a conference designed to develop networks of support. “Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow: An Imagine Conference for Ordained Women,” will meet at the Mercy Center.
Keynote speakers include three pioneering ordained women: the Rt. Rev. Barbara Harris, retired bishop suffragan of the Diocese of Massachusetts and the first woman ordained a bishop in the Anglican Communion; the Rev. Carmen Guerrero, former Jubilee Ministries officer for the Episcopal Church, and the Rev. Deacon Phina Borgeson, long active in work in ministry development and ecological concerns.
Plans for the conference emerged after a national ordained women’s conference in 2006 in Kanuga, NC. Conference planners hope the event will help develop support networks for ordained women within each of the dioceses and also promote provincial gatherings every two to three years. Bishops in the province will be asked to provide financial support to help send two or three women to the conference. Planners have also sought funding from The Episcopal Church and Province VIII.
We are excited about the possibilities a conference like this has to offer, planners have said. As ordained women continue to struggle to find a place and a voice at the table, to obtain full-time employment and recognition in the church, and to deal with isolation, financial, pension and family issues, we believe we can help, support and advocate for one another by creating strong and working networks in our dioceses and in the province.
The three keynote speakers represent decades of ministry experience. Bishop Harris, elected bishop suffragan of Massachusetts in 1988, is a native of Philadelphia and a graduate of the Morris Price School of Advertising and Journalism. For many years she worked in public relations.
She attended Villanova University and studied at the Urban Theology Unit in Sheffield, England. She is also a graduate of the Pennsylvania Foundation for Pastoral Counseling. She was ordained a deacon in 1979 and a priest in 1980, serving as priest in charge of St. Augustine of Hippo Church in Norristown, PA from 1980-1984. In 1984 she was named executive director of the Episcopal Church Publishing Company and publisher of The Witness magazine in 1988. In 1989 she was ordained to the episcopate, the first woman bishop in the Anglican Communion.
Bishop Harris retired in 2002 and in 2003 served as an assisting bishop in the Diocese of Washington, D.C.
Phina Borgeson was ordained deacon in 1974 after earning a Master of Divinity degree from the Church Divinity School of the Pacific (CDSP). In the fall of 2008 she was honored by the seminary with a Doctor of Divinity degree.
From 1973 until 1989 she worked in the Diocese of Nevada primarily in ministry development. She was diocesan missioner for Christian education from 1990 to 1995 in the Diocese of Los Angeles. She moved to Santa Rosa, CA in 2000 and worked for the National Center for Science Education, encouraging leaders from many faith groups in their support of teaching evolution. She connected with science and technology networks and helped write “A Catechism of Creation for the Episcopal Church.” She now serves on the Episcopal Church’s Committee on Science, Technology and Faith.
Borgeson is consulting correspondent for the FEAST (Faith, Environmental Advocacy, Science and Technology) initiative of Episcopal Life Media. She also convenes” Celebrating Creation,” the Episcopal Ecological Network in the Diocese of Northern California. As a consultant on local ministry development in the Diocese of Northern California, she works part-time for the Redwood Episcopal Cluster and serves on the Total Ministry Development Group. She is also a lecturer in ministry development at CDSP.
Carmen Guerrero, a Texas native, earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees at Our Lady of the Lake University in San Antonio and received a Master of Divinity degree from the School of Theology at the University of the South (Sewanee) in 1984. She was ordained deacon in 1984 and priest in 1985 and was honored with a Doctor of Divinity degree from CDSP in 1994.
Guerrero served in diocesan and parish positions in the Diocese of Honduras from 1984-1986; was vicar of Santa Fe Episcopal Mission in San Antonio, TX in 1989-1990 and was archdeacon in the Diocese of Los Angeles from 1990-1999. From 1999 until her retirement she was the Jubilee Officer of the Episcopal Church. She now resides in the Diocese of Arizona where she serves part time as Canon for Peace and Justice. Since the 1980s she has served in numerous leadership roles at diocesan, provincial and national levels.
Guerrero has authored chapters in several books, published a variety of articles, produced study materials both in English and Spanish, directed production of an anti-racism video and contributed several poems and prayers to “Women’s Uncommon Prayers.”
A brochure with details of the conference will be distributed in the province and each diocese has a contact person who can provide information. The contact person in the Diocese of Spokane is the Rev. Canon Kristi Philip who can be reached by e-mail at kristip@spokanediocese.org, or by phone (509) 624-3191.