Initially, she returned to church solely for her children — "I wanted them to learn about Jesus," she says — but also because she longed for the sense of community and support that her mother had received from their LDS ward. "Everybody looked out for everybody," she says. "It was a wonderful ward."

She began by attending the Episcopal Church in 1975. "I was not looking for a church," she says. "I was surprised when I realized that this was my home."

By 1977, she began to consider entering the ministry herself. In 1979, she enrolled in seminary. With four children younger than 10, this was no small feat. To make it work, she got up at 4 a.m. and studied until 7.

She pauses as she tells this story and then smiles widely. "I had a direct experience to being called to that ministry of a priest," she says. "A sense that this was what I was really made for. This is what my life had been leading to. That was affirmed by the others I shared that with."

She flew to Salt Lake City to tell her father of her decision face to face. After being told, he sat silent for a long time and then smiled and said, "Of course." Says Bishop Irish, "He knew enough about the Anglican Church to know it had an intellectual tradition and it would appeal to me. It has a rich intellectual heritage of scientists, poets and philosophers."

As fate would have it, this was the time when the Episcopal Church began ordaining women. Shortly after graduating from the Virginia Theological Seminary in 1983, she was ordained a deacon and then a priest. She served congregations in dioceses in Washington, D.C., Virginia and Michigan.

Serendipity in Utah

In 1995, Bishop Irish was in Salt Lake City for a Tanner Co. board meeting. Jorgensen invited her to attend church with her the next day. As fate would have it, it was announced in church that Bishop George Bates would retire.

"It was serendipitous," Jorgensen says. "I had never been to church with her before or since."

On the drive home, Jorgensen asked her friend if she was qualified to serve as a bishop. Yes, she replied. Jorgensen told Bishop Irish she would nominate her and did. "I had never even heard her preach. I just had a sense of her presence," Jorgensen says.

In December 1995, Carolyn Tanner Irish was elected bishop of the Utah diocese. "This was a second home to our family, but I couldn't imagine moving back to Salt Lake," she says. "For all I knew, the Episcopal Church didn't exist there."

After 37 years of living out of state, she returned to Utah as only the third woman ever voted to serve as a diocesan bishop in the United States.