So Great a Cloud of Witnesses - January 5

Today’s Readings: AM Psalm 2, 110:1-5(6-7); Joshua 1:1-9; Heb. 11:32-12:2; John 15:1-16

Today’s Reflection

“Yet all these, though they were commended for their faith, did not receive what was promised, since God had provided something better so that they would not, apart from us, be made perfect. Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight and the sin that clings so closely, and let us run with persistence the race that is set before us.” (Hebrews 11:39-12:2)

On July 29, 1974, eleven women were ordained to the priesthood at the Church of the Advocate in Philadelphia. Those eleven women, and it’s important that we take a moment to remember their names—Merrill Bittner, Alla Bozarth-Campbell, Alison Cheek, Emily Hewitt, Carter Heyward, Suzanne Hiatt, Marie Moorefield, Jeanette Piccard, Betty Schiess, Katrina Swanson, and Nancy Wittig—are now known in the history of the Episcopal Church as The Philadelphia Eleven. Even after the Eleven were ordained, they continued to face barriers to living into the ordained ministry to which they had been called. Because the General Convention of the Episcopal Church had not yet revised the wording of the church canons, many called their ordination invalid.

It wasn’t just these eleven women who I consider to be in the “great cloud of witnesses” that opened the door to women to be ordained as priests. Four bishops—Bishop Daniel Corrigan, Bishop Robert L. DeWitt, Bishop Edward R. Welles II, and Bishop Antonio Ramos—were willing to use their places of privilege to promote equal opportunity for women to serve not only as lay leaders and deacons, but also as priests in the Episcopal Church. At the time, Bishop Ramos noted that this ordination “stands as a prophetic witness on behalf of and for the oppressed.”

The preacher at the ordination service was the vice president of the House of Deputies, Dr. Charles Willie. “It was an unjust law of the state,” he said, “that demeaned the personhood of blacks by requiring them to move to the back of the bus, and it is an unjust law of the church which demeans women by denying them the opportunity to be professional priests.” A few weeks later, when the House of Bishops declared the women’s ordinations invalid, Willie resigned his post as vice president of the House of Deputies in protest, explaining, “In terms of religious values, I believe that love is the basic principle that should govern all social relations, that justice and equity are the manifestations of love in our daily activities, and that freedom is a necessary and essential condition for loving relationships, including those in church and society.”

Dr. Willie, as an African American man, was himself in a group long marginalized in the Episcopal Church as in the rest of U.S. society. I appreciate his prophetic witness, his willingness to stand up and be counted, his willingness to speak out against the “institutional sins” of the Episcopal Church in his time.

It doesn’t really make sense, when we look at it now, that the church would prevent people from fully living into their call to follow Christ and help others to do the same. It would take two more years before women’s access to all orders of ordained ministry would be approved by the General Convention in September 1976. And it would be thirteen more years until the first woman would be ordained a bishop in the U.S. Episcopal Church, when the Rt. Rev. Barbara Harris was ordained and consecrated as bishop suffragan of Massachusetts in 1989.

For the first 30-something years of my life, I was in other denominations where I, as a woman, felt constrained in how I could serve my church. Now, as an ordained priest in the Episcopal Church, I continue to be grateful for the great cloud of witnesses, not only the women who serve as lay leaders, deacons, priests, and bishops, but also for the great cloud of men and women who have supported all God’s people being able to fully live into their baptismal vows and, if called to do so, to prepare for ordination as well.

Many of the great cloud of witnesses who came before us, such as those whose stories I have shared with you here today, took risks, put themselves and their status and their livelihoods and even their lives on the line, so that others would have more equal opportunities to experience all the fullness of Christ. I pray that now, as a priest, I would be willing to take those risks and do the same for others.

—Becky+

Questions for Self-Reflection

Have you ever faced a barrier to something you felt you were meant to do? How did facing that barrier influence how you perceived yourself at the time? Did facing a barrier in your own life change the way you perceived the barriers faced by others?

Daily Challenge

You can read more about the Philadelphia Eleven in this Episcopal church press release from 1974, what they went on to do in their lives post-ordination, and of a reunion of those who remain with us today.