The Rt. Rev. Edward R. Wells II, retired bishop of West Missouri, leads the ceremony of laying on of hands as one of four bishops who ordained 11 women to the priesthood on July 29, 1974. Photo: Archives of The Episcopal Church
[Episcopal News Service] Churches on July 28 marked the 50th anniversary of the ordination of the first women priests in The Episcopal Church with special sermons, screenings of the Philadelphia Eleven documentary and even by encouraging churches to have a woman celebrating at every altar.
The ordination service took place on July 29, 1974 – the feast day of Mary and Martha of Bethany – at Philadelphia’s Church of the Advocate. In 1974, no canon specifically forbade women from becoming priests in The Episcopal Church, but to that point diocesan standing committees and bishops had almost uniformly rejected women’s requests for ordination to the priesthood. Only one of the Philadelphia Eleven had received the backing of her standing committee, and their bishops refused to ordain them, so the ordinations were considered “irregular.”
Four more women were ordained at St. Stephen and the Incarnation in Washington, D.C., on Sept. 7, 1975. They became known as the Washington Four.
General Convention voted on Sept. 15, 1976, to allow women to become priests and bishops. Episcopal Church Canons, as of Jan. 1, 1977, called for equal access to the ordination process for both men and women. However, meeting in October of that year, the House of Bishops gave cover to any process gatekeeper who refused to follow the canon because of “his or her conscientious objection.” Read more about the “conscience clause” here. Click here for a timeline of women’s ordination.
One of the original 11, the Rev. Carter Heyward, preached the sermon at the Philadelphia Episcopal Cathedral. She acknowledged the presence in the congregation of another of the women ordained at that groundbreaking service, the Rev. Emily Hewitt.
The Rev. Carter Heyward, one of the Philadelphia 11, preaches at the Philadelphia Episcopal Cathedral on July 28 to mark the 50th anniversary of the first ordination of women in The Episcopal Church. Photo: YouTube screenshot
“Many are captivated by the power of the Philadelphia ordination [service],” Heyward said in her sermon, “because at its root, it reflected an encouraging response to two questions: who are our neighbors, and how do we love our enemies.” At that time, women with a call to ordained ministry were the ones being left outside the gates of “business as usual,” she said, “so we were called to stand with them, for them and for a few of us, as them.”
Others supported the effort to help “make clear that the Philadelphia ordination was not just a one-shot blip in history.”
Fifty years later, there are 7,166 women clergy in The Episcopal Church, either active or retired, Curt Ritter, senior vice president and head of content & creative services for Church Pension Group, told Episcopal News Service. That includes 2.075 deacons, 5,039 priests and 52 bishops
The Episcopal Diocese of New York urged all its worshipping congregations to have “a woman at every altar” at their main Sunday service on July 28. The diocese’s assistant bishop, the Rt. Rev. Mary Glasspool, preached at Washington National Cathedral during its celebration service. The livestream of the service included a slide show of the history of ordained women in The Episcopal Church.
The Episcopal Diocese of Rhode Island has released the first part of an oral history series that features interviews with five history-making women who have deep connections to the diocese. Interviews with Bishop Geralyn Wolf, the diocese’s first female bishop, and the Rev. Canon Linda Grenz, who served as canon to the ordinary from 2013 to 2019, were posted online July 29. Interviews with the Rev. Jo-Ann Drake, the first Rhode Island woman ordained to the priesthood; the Rev. Libby Nestor, the first woman ordained within the diocese; and the Rev. Elizabeth Habecker, the first woman ordained in the Diocese of Maine, will be posted on Aug. 5.
Episcopal Diocese of Washington Bishop Mariann Budde was the preacher at a service at St. Mark’s Cathedral in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Prior to her election as bishop in 2011, Budde was rector of St. John’s Episcopal Church in Minneapolis.
One of the Philadelphia 11, the Rev. Alla Bozarth, noted in a July 28 Facebook post that since she and the Rev. Jeannette Piccard both were from Minnesota, they were the “Minnesota bookends” of the Philadelphia 11, with Bozarth the youngest at 27 and Piccard the oldest at 79.
In a June 28 Facebook post, Bozarth said that Piccard had felt a call to be a priest since she was 11 years old. “Because she had waited the longest for fulfillment, she was the first of us Eleven to be ordained a priest,” Bozarth wrote.
Los Angeles Bishop John Taylor said in a July 29 Facebook post that Heyward would be the keynote speaker at the diocese’s annual convention in November. “Her visit will give us the privilege of being in relationship with history while sitting at the knee of a great teacher,” he wrote.
He also noted that he was ordained in 2004 after a midlife vocational call, after “the church’s sinful gender ban was long gone.” He added, “The wages of misogyny are mediocrity. While justice for our siblings in Christ was by far the most important outcome in 1974, it also meant that everything the church did wasn’t going to be half-baked anymore.”
— Melodie Woerman is an Episcopal News Service freelance reporter based in Kansas.