4/10/08 UPDATE: An e-mailer named Chris correctly points out that the first woman to undergo ordination as a bishop in the Episcopal Church was Barbara Harris on Feb. 11, 1989.

The woman bishop referred to in the Alamogordo Daily News article was, as our e-mailer points out, most likely Katherine Jefferts Schori, who was appointed presiding bishop of the Episcopal Church in 2006.

Here, from Wikipedia, is a brief account of the Episcopal Church's history of ordaining women as priests and/or bishops:

The first woman ordained to the priesthood in the Anglican Communion was Florence Li Tim-Oi, who was ordained on 25 January 1944 by the bishop of Hong Kong. It was thirty years before the practice became widespread.

In 1974, eleven women were ordained to the priesthood in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, by three retired ECUSA bishops. Four more women were ordained in 1975 in Washington D.C. These ordinations were ruled "irregular" because they had been done without the authorization of ECUSA's General Convention. Two years later, General Convention authorized the ordination of women to the priesthood and the episcopate. The first woman bishop in the Communion was Barbara Clementine Harris, who was ordained bishop suffragan of Massachusetts in February 1989. Penelope Jamieson of the Anglican Church in New Zealand was ordained Bishop of Dunedin a few months later as the first female diocesan bishop. The first female primate (or senior bishop of a national church) is Katharine Jefferts Schori, who was elected presiding bishop of the Episcopal Church USA at its 2006 General Convention, and began her nine year term as Presiding Bishop and Primate on November 1, 2006. By late 2007 the Episcopal church had elected 14 women to serve as bishops.

The Rev. Fred Griffin and the congregation of the Church of the Ascension in Cloudcroft have left the Episcopal Church in the United States and voted to join the Anglican Province of Uganda, according to a news release from the Episcopal Diocese of the Rio Grande.

The Rio Grande diocese learned Friday that the Cloudcroft church had been received into the African church, and after officials from the diocese met Saturday with local church members, the Church of the Ascension held its final service at the church on Sunday, the Alamogordo Daily News reported.

The breakaway congregation, which numbers between 20 and 30 people, voted unanimously to join the Anglican Communion in Africa, the Daily News said.

They join a number of Episcopal dioceses and congregations in the United States that have joined Anglican churches in Africa and Asia after the the ordination of a gay bishop in 2003 and a woman bishop in 2006, according to the Daily News.

The former congregation will vacate the Cloudcroft church building some time this week and seek another place to worship, the Rio Grande Diocese news release said.

The Episcopal Church will continue to oversee the Church of the Ascension, and services will be held there while pastors are rotated in to serve until a new pastor is named permanently, the Daily News reported.

“We are saddened by their decision but pray the Lord will bless their community with faith, hope and love,” said the Rio Grande Diocese news release.

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