Alongside the 670 bishops at the Lambeth Conference are 550 spouses at the parallel Spouses’ Conference.‘Spouses’, not ‘wives’ because amongst them are five husbands of female bishops.
One of them, Larry Waynick, gave his story.
There are not many people who are routinely mistakenly identified as a bishop. But for Larry Waynick it is a confusion that happens often - and he gets a mischievous enjoyment out of explaining that it is actually his wife, Cate, who is the Bishop of Indianapolis.
It is an experience he could not have anticipated when he married his childhood sweetheart 17 years before she was ordained. ‘Going back to the beginning, I never had the slightest idea that my wife would ever end up being in the clergy. You might describe her as a child bride. She was just barely 20 years old when we were married. I was 24.
‘I was in the military at the time having finished school. When we married she dropped out of college to be married and travel with me. After the military we settled down and began a family and she did odd jobs, as she could, but when our youngest child entered school she decided she wanted to go back and complete her education at university and did so, majoring in Religious Studies.
‘I asked her what she thought she might be going to do with that kind of a major and said: “Well, I’m just interested in it and I don’t know where that’s going to take me.”’
Having graduated from university Kate enrolled in the local Roman Catholic seminary. She had served in just about every position available to a lay person within the Church - both in the local parish and at diocesan level. She had served as Chair of the Altar Guild, Chair of the ECW (Episcopal Church Women’s group), had been junior Warden, senior Warden, taught in the church school, sung in the choir, rang hand bells and even chaired the group that oversaw people seeking ordination in the diocese.
‘The bishop knew that she was fully grounded in her Anglicanism and they did have a very rigorous academic programme. So after four years of seminary she had her Masters of Divinity and in the last part of her time there she had to do field work and had to do that at the largest parish in the Diocese of Michigan.
‘When she graduated that parish offered her a position as Deacon. She stayed there for about 10 years moving into an Associate Rector position. After her time there she obtained her own parish as Rector of All Saints in Pontiac, Michigan. She was there three years when her name was submitted for the Episcopate in the Diocese of Indianapolis’.
At first Cate thought the proposition was a joke, but her bishop - and her husband - soon persuaded her to go forward.
‘She called me at the office and told me on the phone that the Bishop of Michigan had called her and asked if he could submit her name for consideration and she laughed at it thinking that he was joking. And it became clear quite quickly that he was not joking. He said: “Today’s the last day and I have to know whether I can do this or not.”
“So she called and I said: “Absolutely! Do it!” I think it is important that women participate in the process and I said: “What can happen? You go through the process and if it doesn’t work out you’ve gained some knowledge you can pass on to other women through that process; and if you’re elected I believe it is God’s will.”
‘It came at a time with our two children being married and leaving home and my eligibility to retire after 30 plus years in the public education system in the State of Michigan. So I was eligible to retire, did so, moved to Indianapolis and we’ve been having a wonderful time since. It has been a wonderful experience for both of us.’
Despite the growing numbers of female bishops in a number of provinces throughout the Anglican Communion, people still associate with the idea that ‘the bishop’ will be a man. As a result, Larry is often mistaken for the bishop.
‘When Cate and I are together and somebody is introducing “the bishop” somebody will reach out their hand out to shake my hand and I have to admit I do get a little bit of pleasure and kind of a naughty smile on my face when I say: “No, she’s the bishop!” I I do enjoy that.
‘But this is my second Lambeth Conference. My first Lambeth Conference was the first time any women bishops had ever been to Lambeth and there were fewer male spouses than there were female bishops because some were not married.
‘So we were quite the minority at that time. We were curiosities and had a lot of attention paid to us. We were interviewed and talked to on almost a daily basis with the ubiquitous question always being: “What’s it like to be a male spouse of a female bishop?”
‘But I have to say that in 10 years the difference is that we’re pretty much not paid attention to at this conference, which is a good thing. The spouses have just accepted men as another spouse.
‘They realise we share with them some of the same thing they had all shared with each other prior to males being spouses of bishops: the schedule, the problems, the dealing with all kinds of situations that can be disruptive in a home and that kind of thing. So it has been very different at this Lambeth Conference in a positive way that the men are just so totally accepted.
‘But we still occasionally get looked to as “the bishop” when people don’t know. But of course if you’re wife is wearing a purple shirt and a dog collar, that’s a giveaway!
The move to female bishops in The Episcopal Church in America didn’t attract the same level of contention as it has in England.
Larry puts that down to the one-stage process of accepting the ordination of women and the way bishops in England are appointed whereas in America they are elected: ‘In the US, when women’s ordination was approved by our General Convention it was a given that if one could be ordained as a deacon then they could be ordained as a priest and they could be ordained as a bishop. It was one package.
‘Of course, that did not happen for a few years. It was approved for ordination in ’76 and I think it was in ’88 or ’89 that the first woman was elected bishop - which was another major difference between our polities.
‘One of the concerns that I see in the Church of England is the fear that they may receive a bishop that is appointed for them and it might be a person of a gender they could not accept. That kind of fear in the US was negated by our polity which says you have to be elected.
‘If you are elected the diocese felt you were the right person, regardless of your gender. So I think that the Church of England probably has to do some homework in terms of discovering which dioceses would be friendly or accepting of female bishops before they are appointed. That would make some sense to me. Our polity in the US just simply builds that in.’
He admits that some people ‘still don’t know quite what to do’ with bishop’s husbands, and added there are different expectations for male and female spouses: ‘It’s pretty much accepted that the man had, or has, a career or a profession and that his involvement in the life of the diocese of the church is probably not going to be severely different than it already is.
‘He’s not going to be expected to bake cakes and serve tea and do things that many wives of bishops have traditionally done.’
And his advice to the husbands of senior women priests in England who may wonder what lies in store when the ordination of women to the episcopate is finally approved by Synod is simply: ‘enjoy it!’
‘It can be very enjoyable. It leads to opportunities that he may never have had otherwise. He will meet people you would never have had the opportunity to meet otherwise.
‘It also gives you the opportunity to expand your own spirituality and expand your own effectiveness and gives you opportunities to do things on a much wider scale than you would ever be able to do as a parishioner in a local parish church.’
In the Church of England the General Synod has agreed that women should be ordained as bishops. Legislation is being drawn up which will need to be approved with a two-thirds majority in each House (laity, clergy and bishops) and will then need Parliamentary approval before becoming law.
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