Below is an interview excerpt with the Rev. Canon Mary D. Glasspool, who on Saturday became the first openly lesbian Episcopal priest elected as a bishop in the Anglican Communion. The election drew a stern rebuke from Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan D. Williams, who said her confirmation would jeopardize relations in the 70 million-member church. The election of the first openly gay bishop, Gene Robinson of New Hampshire, six years ago created a huge rift.

Matthew Hay Brown reports:

Are you comfortable being a symbol?

Glasspool: It’s both a privilege and a responsibility. I feel like it’s an incredible privilege to be hearing from people I don’t know and who don’t know me all over the world. I have a friend in Ghana who is an Anglican priest in Ghana. And hopefully, he, again, God willing, wants to attend the consecration. He’s a straight man. He’s married with two sons. And I and my partner, Becki, have hosted them in this country. So that’s all a privilege and very exciting.

You know, it’s a responsibility because people have entrusted me in this election. The people of the Diocese of Los Angeles have entrusted me to be a leader. And I feel my primary responsibility, certainly after the consent process, and after the consecration, is to the people of the Diocese of Los Angeles. But I guess that symbolic level of things going on, I hope simply to facilitate a kind of liberation for people who have felt imprisoned in various ways, either by their sexual identity, or by the color of their skin, or the fact that they’re in poverty or whatever, that this is all part of God’s freeing up of the world and healing and reconciling of the world.

Read full interview here.