The Eleven - July 29

Today’s Readings: Psalm 33:1-5, 20-21; Esther 12:10-16; Romans 12:9-13; Luke 10:38-42

Today’s Reflection

O God, you poured your Spirit from on high to bless and summon these women, who heard the strength of your call: Equip, guide, and inspire us with wisdom, boldness, and faith to trust you in all circumstances, hear you preach new life to your church, and stretch out our hands to serve you, as you created us and redeemed us in the name of Jesus Christ, who lives with you and the Holy Spirit, one God everlasting. Amen. (Collect for the Commemoration of the First Ordination of Women to the Priesthood in Episcopal Church, July 29, 1974, from A Great Cloud of Witnesses)

Forty-eight years ago, on July 29, 1974, at the Church of the Advocate in Philadelphia, the very first women were ordained to the priesthood in the United States. 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.” One of the Philadelphia Eleven, Alla Bozarth-Campbell, in her book Womanpriest: A Personal Odyssey, included a poem she composed that captures the context in which her ordination occurred:

Incomplete, they call us, unrecognizable.

Because we are eleven

and not the Magic Twelve

of your chosen few?

Because we are female…

And not important enough

to mention in Matthew,

Mark, Luke, or John,

our Hebrew sisters

present at your First Feast?

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 to include all, regardless of gender, 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, like me, to be ordained as priests. Four bishops, whose names also deserve to be remembered: Bishop Daniel Corrigan, former suffragan bishop of Colorado; Bishop Robert L. DeWitt, former bishop of Pennsylvania; and Bishop Edward R. Welles II, Manset, Me., retired bishop of West Missouri, and the Rt. Rev. Antonio Ramos, Bishop of Costa Rica.

These bishops were part of the church establishment but were willing to use their places of privilege to promote equal opportunity for women to serve not only as lay people and deacons, but also as priests in the Episcopal Church. Bishop Ramos, as documented in a July 31, 1974, press release found in the Archives of the Episcopal Church, said that this ordination: “stands as a prophetic witness on behalf of and for the oppressed.” He added that the ordination of the eleven women can “be characterized as an act of disobedience, ecclesiastical disobedience on our part, willfully done to abolish a system of canon law which is discriminatory, and which can no longer stand the judgment of the liberating Christ.”

The preacher at the ordination service was the vice president of the House of Deputies, Dr. Charles Willie, who “said that he participated in the service ‘not because I wanted to speak out but because I could not remain silent.’ Dr. Willie compared the event to the civil rights movement. “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.” However, he said, the ordination must be celebrated “not as an event of arrogant disobedience but as a moment of tender loving defiance.” A few weeks later, when the House of Bishops declared the women’s ordinations invalid, Dr. Willie resigned his post as vice president of the House of Deputies in protest.

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:

As a 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.

Becky+

Questions for Reflection

Whose lives and stories have inspired you to take bold steps in your faith and in pursuing your own call? Who might be inspired by your own faith journey?

Daily Challenge

You can read more of the Philadelphia Eleven here and learn more of a documentary film (still in production) about their experiences here.