{"id":4261,"date":"2010-04-05T19:29:04","date_gmt":"2010-04-05T19:29:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/deaconsbench\/2010\/04\/and-now-meet-reverend-barbie.html"},"modified":"2010-04-05T19:29:04","modified_gmt":"2010-04-05T19:29:04","slug":"and-now-meet-reverend-barbie","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/2010\/04\/and-now-meet-reverend-barbie.html","title":{"rendered":"And now, meet Reverend Barbie"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I kid you not.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.religionnews.com\/index.php?\/rnstext\/barbie_gets_ordained_and_has_the_wardrobe_to_match\/\">Take a look: <\/a><\/p>\n<blockquote><p>\nWith her careers as veterinarian, astronaut and U.S. president behind her, Barbie has at last found her true calling: as a second-career Episcopal priest.<\/p>\n<p><span class=\"mt-enclosure mt-enclosure-image\"><a href=\"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/deaconsbench\/phpThumb.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" alt=\"phpThumb.jpg\" src=\"https:\/\/wp-media.beliefnet.com\/sites\/212\/import\/assets_c\/2010\/04\/phpThumb-thumb-200x265-12660.jpg\" class=\"mt-image-left\" style=\"float: left;margin: 0pt 20px 20px 0pt\" height=\"265\" width=\"200\" \/><\/a><\/span>The 11.5-inch-tall fictional graduate of Church Divinity School of the Pacific in Berkeley, Calif., has donned a cassock and surplice and is rector at St. Barbara&#8217;s-by-the-Sea in (where else?) Malibu, Calif.<\/p>\n<p>She arrived at the church fully accessorized, as is Barbie&#8217;s custom. Her impeccably tailored ecclesiastical vestments include various colored chasubles (the sleeveless vestments worn at Mass) for every liturgical season, black clergy shirt with white collar, neat skirt and heels, a laptop with prepared sermon and a miniature, genuine Bible.<\/p>\n<p>Apparently a devotee of the &#8220;smells and bells&#8221; of High Church tradition, the Rev. Barbie even has a tiny thurible, a metal vessel used for sending clouds of incense wafting toward heaven.<\/p>\n<p>The Rev. Barbie, who in less than a week had drawn nearly 3,000 friends on her Facebook page, spends most of her time in the office of the Rev. Dena Cleaver-Bartholomew, rector of Christ (Episcopal) Church, in Manlius, N.Y., near Syracuse.<\/p>\n<p>The doll, her wardrobe and portable sacristy were a gift from Cleaver-Bartholomew&#8217;s friend, the Rev. Julie Blake Fisher, a priest in Kent, Ohio.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;I got a phone call from my husband who said a large package had arrived;Julie had told me that she was making something for me. She used to be a dressmaker and she makes gorgeous stoles, so I thought she was making me a stole,&#8221; said Cleaver-Bartholomew. &#8220;When I came home and there was this enormous box, I knew it wasn&#8217;t just a stole!&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Fisher had made Episcopal Priest Barbie and a few vestments two years ago for the children in her parish to dress.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;I thought the children would like to practice playing with the vestments and learning what they are,&#8221; said Fisher. The Rev. Barbie was a hit with both the children and a local group of women clergy, including Cleaver-Bartholomew.<\/p>\n<p>When Cleaver-Bartholomew later got called to her parish in New York, Fisher knew the perfect gift for her friend.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;I thought, `I don&#8217;t have time to make her one of her own; I&#8217;ll just send her Episcopal Priest Barbie for her farewell gift,&#8221;&#8216; said Fisher. &#8220;But then, when I sat down to start to package everything up, I thought `What if I added this? What if I added that? What if I made this? It would just take one more day.&#8221;&#8216;<\/p>\n<p>One more day turned into 100 hours of painstaking labor, and &#8220;before I knew it, it was Episcopal Church Barbie&#8211;High Church Edition,&#8221; Fisher said. <\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p> Check out <a href=\"http:\/\/www.religionnews.com\/index.php?\/rnstext\/barbie_gets_ordained_and_has_the_wardrobe_to_match\/\">the link<\/a> for more.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I kid you not. Take a look: With her careers as veterinarian, astronaut and U.S. president behind her, Barbie has at last found her true calling: as a second-career Episcopal priest. The 11.5-inch-tall fictional graduate of Church Divinity School of the Pacific in Berkeley, Calif., has donned a cassock and surplice and is rector at&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4261","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-this-that"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>And now, meet Reverend Barbie - The Deacon&#039;s Bench<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/2010\/04\/and-now-meet-reverend-barbie.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"And now, meet Reverend Barbie - The Deacon&#039;s Bench\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"I kid you not. Take a look: With her careers as veterinarian, astronaut and U.S. president behind her, Barbie has at last found her true calling: as a second-career Episcopal priest. 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