CELEBRATIONS to mark the 50th anniversary of women’s ordination to the priesthood in the Episcopal Church in the United States have included services led by one of the first women ordained in 1974.
The Revd Carter Heyward, one of the “Philadelphia Eleven” — the first 11 women to be ordained priest in what was declared two weeks later to be an “irregular” ordination — said that the first ordinations of women were about justice.
Preaching at Philadelphia Episcopal Cathedral, on Sunday, she said: “Many are captivated by the power of the Philadelphia ordination because, at its root, it reflected an encouraging response to two questions: who are our neighbours, 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”.
“These ordinations were about making justice: love, about siding with those left out, about standing up against a misuse of power, in this case the power of misogyny — the deep abiding fear of women in patriarchal Christianity — as well as about the use of hierarchical power-over to exclude and oppress women or anyone else: Black and other people of colour, LGBTQ+ siblings, immigrants, addicts, prisoners, the earth and water and sky, the list goes on.”
The ordinations “were meant to shake up the Church’s priorities and push it to one side with those who are excluded, marginalised, overlooked, in every generation”.
She described the 11 women — six of whom are still alive — as “audacious”. They ranged in age from 27 to 79-year-old Jeannette Picard, a high-altitude balloonist who had held the women’s altitude record for three decades. She was ordained first because of the length of time that she had waited for ordination, having announced aged 11 her calling to be a priest.
The ordination service took place on 29 July 1974, at the Church for the Advocate, Philadelphia. No canon specifically forbade women’s ordination, but diocesan standing committees and bishops had rejected calls to ordain women. The ordination of the 11 was carried out by three retired bishops. At an emergency House of Bishops meeting in August, after the service, Mrs Picard told the Presiding Bishop, John Allin, “Sonny, I’m old enough to have changed your nappies.”
Church leaders continued debating the validity of the women’s ordinations for another two years — initially describing them as “irregular” — until the General Convention approved a new section of the Church’s ordination canons in September 1976, saying its provisions “shall be equally applicable to men and women”.
A “conscience clause”, however, allowed bishops to continue to opt out of following the canon if they held a “conscientious objection”. After 20 years, that loophole was closed.
Many Episcopalians “have no idea about what the early women went through”, the Rt Revd Chilton Knudsen, who served as the Bishop of Maine from 1998 to 2008, told the Episcopal News Service. There are now 7166 women clergy in the Episcopal Church, active and retired.
Many cathedrals and churches showed screenings of a new documentary on the Philadelphia 11 over the weekend.
In her sermon, Ms Heyward continued to challenge the Church to speak up and take action. When the Church today refused to take sides for fear of being labelled political, she said, “we are in fact siding with the rich and powerful”. She warned of a surge of “Christofacism” — conservative, white, male Christian nationalism — and, though she did not mention Donald Trump by name, she told people to look up Project 2025, which has been characterised as a wish list for a Trump presidency.
The Bishop of Los Angeles, the Rt Revd John Taylor, wrote on Facebook that 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.”
