July 24th, 2024

Our upcoming Chapel Camp on July 29, 2024, will mark the 50th anniversary of the ordination of women as priests in the Episcopal Church. The first ordination of women took place on July 29, 1974, at the Church of the Advocate in Philadelphia.

The litany written by our Assistant Bishop, the Rt. Rev. Carol Gallagher, for this commemorative year emphasizes both the struggles and firmness of faith of the Philadelphia 11 and the brave women who followed the path to ordination.

We write today about Pauli Murray’s contributions to the movement for women’s ordination a few years leading up to 1974. Pauli actively championed women’s issues before considering her own ordination as the first African American woman to become a priest in 1977. She described her efforts in this way:

“The burgeoning women’s movement absorbed much of my energies, for I was serving on a faculty committee to improve the status of women at Brandeis, on the national board of the ACLU to win support for the ERA, and on the Commission on Women organized by Church Women United and chaired by my good friend Thelma Stevens.” (Song in a Weary Throat, p. 545)

Pauli recounted that she signed, along with six laywomen, a telegram of protest about the refusal to seat a woman delegate at a special convention in South, Bend, Indiana. She followed up with memos to church officials. In light of this activism, she was surprised to learn that she had been appointed to a special Commission on Ordained and Licensed Ministries to study women’s ministries. In the spring of 1970, she attended the Graymoor (New York) Conference, a gathering of 45 Episcopal women organized to discuss women’s issues. As Pauli noted: “The body adopted a strong resolution calling for equality of women in every aspect of the life of the church, including admission to all levels of clergy.”

Pauli then met with the Reverend Henry Rightor in Baltimore on September 19, 1970. They examined the Constitution and Canons of the Episcopal Church and reported that there was no explicit language that prohibited women from being considered for ordination. Pauli noted that “the General Convention of 1970 bypassed the report but voted to remove the language that limited the lowest level of ordained ministry, the diaconate, to males, thereby opening the way for women to enter the ordained clergy.” (Song in a Weary Throat, p. 547)

–Mary Beth Clack, Mary Blocher, Cindy Coldren, Pat Krol, Liz Levi
–Published in This Week @Emmanuel Church July 24, 2024