She has taken on the cause of the environment and the working poor and immigrants, advocating low-income housing and speaking out against English-only laws.

She poked fun at the Legislature for a law saying churches wanting to ban guns from their premises had to publicize the ban by, among other ways, posting signs. She complied by placing giant signs, nearly 4 feet tall, on the doors of Episcopal churches, with a big red circle through a gun, and these words: "The Episcopal Church welcomes you — but not your guns." The signs earned mention in Newsweek.

"I don't think churches needed signs — so we overdid it," she says. "We wanted to tweak them for that."

Maybe this is why her assistant, Mary Kay Williams, says, "She's not afraid to jump in the fray. There are going to be people who don't agree with her on everything she does and says for her church, but they can't say they don't respect her honesty and integrity."

Deep LDS roots

Bishop Irish is a liberal, outspoken Episcopal leader in conservative LDS Utah, which is probably not the best way to win friends in her old home state, but she's getting along just fine, thank you.

"I don't have a lot of unpleasantness to deal with," she says. "I am treated very, very well. Even when people disagree on subjects, I haven't experienced ugliness. It's one of the nicest cultures I know of.

"I suppose what I want to say is that if people disagree with you or are disgusted by your beliefs, they don't feel they have to come up and tell you or write you letters. Most of the letters about (her support of Bishop Gene) Robinson were from outside the state. And neither of the big boys — the Mormons and Catholics — could have voted the way I did."

Her late father would approve of her independence and her stands on issues. He spent a lifetime tweaking and questioning the beliefs of his fellow Mormons and Utahns, and to know O.C. Tanner is to know Bishop Irish. "The fruit didn't fall far from the tree," one friend says.

Both sides of the bishop's family — the Tanners and Clarks — have deep roots in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Her ancestors were contemporaries of Brigham Young and Joseph Smith. O.C. Tanner grew up the youngest in a large, poor polygamist family, virtually abandoned by his father after the practice of polygamy was outlawed.