I’ll talk more about patriarchy and the church in another post, but I wanted to get this out there early: there are women priests. There are a lot of them, in fact. There are women bishops. There aren’t as many as we’d like, unfortunately. However the two highest positions in the Episcopal Church (Presiding Bishop and President of the House of Deputies) were both held by women from 2006-2015. Gender is a protected class in our church canons, meaning churches are not to discriminate against gender when considering anyone for any position.