The Philadelphia Eleven

July 29, 1974

Fifty years ago, on July 29, 1974, the Feast of Saint Mary and Saint Martha, eleven brave women were ordained as Episcopal priests by three courageous bishops at Church of the Advocate in Philadelphia. The bishops claimed that “obedience to the Spirit” justified the ordinations. This was before the ordination of women had been officially approved by the Episcopal Church. The women were threatened and harassed.

To understand the place of women in the Episcopal Church, it is helpful to know that an Episcopal deaconess movement began in 1857 in Baltimore with the nursing of wounded soldiers. The General Convention of the Episcopal Church adopted the first canon on Deaconesses in 1889. This was different from the role of male deacons and involved ministry to “the sick, the afflicted and the poor,” as well as “permanency,” being set apart by the wearing of a habit. Although celibacy was not officially required, if a deaconess got married, “her appointment was vacated.”  Deaconesses were not involved in the liturgical acts of the church.

Lay women were only given voice and vote in the House of Deputies in 1970. Although the decision to treat deaconesses the same as male deacons was approved at the 1970 General Convention, the ordination of women to the priesthood and consecration to the episcopate was debated and failed to pass at that convention in Houston and at the 1973 General Convention in Louisville. There was great concern that this decision might result in a split in the Episcopal Church, as well as tremendous frustration by those women who were already serving as deacons.

The Rev. Dr. Carter Heyward, in a YouTube Interview given on October 21, 2020, in Brevard, North Carolina, spoke about the risk they were taking in 1974, “We all assumed that none of us would ever be accepted as priests in the Episcopal Church, that our ordination would mean that somehow, we ourselves would be defrocked, that we would be sent away. But what we hoped that what it would do would be to crack open the world of the Episcopal Church for other women coming along behind us and help the church realize that it had to open its ordination rites to women.” She pointed out that women were already allowed to be ministers in many of the other Protestant churches.

The women who were ordained irregularly were: Merrill Bittner, Alla Bozarth-Campbell, Alison Cheek, Emily Hewitt, Carter Heyward, Suzanne Hiatt, Marie Moorefield, Jeanette Piccard, Betty Schiess, Katrina Swanson, and Nancy Wittig. The bishops presiding were Daniel Corrigan, Robert DeWitt, and Edward Welles II.

Four more women were ordained in Saint Stephen and the Incarnation Parish in Washington D.C. in September 1975, Lee McGee, Alison Palmer, Betty Rosenberg, and Diane Tickell.

On September 15, 1976, the House of Bishops passed the change in canon law to include women, and the House of Deputies passed it the next day.  The House of Bishops affirmed the validity of the women who had been “irregularly” ordained by requiring “an act of completion”, “a liturgical incorporation of what was done on those two occasions.”  All the women completed what was required within the next year, except for Marie Moorefield, who became a United Methodist minister.

The first woman to be regularly ordained a priest was Jacqueline Means, ordained on January 1, 1977. Pauli Murray, the first African American woman, was ordained an Episcopal priest on January 8, 1977.

Interestingly, the first woman bishop in the entire Anglican Communion, The Right Rev. Barbara Harris, attended the Church of the Advocate in Philadelphia, and served as an acolyte for that historic 1974 service. Ordained a deacon in 1979 and a priest in 1980, she was consecrated a bishop on February 11, 1989, in Hynes Auditorium in Boston, Massachusetts.

I was there for Bishop Harris’s Consecration. Despite verbal protests to her consecration (handled masterfully by the Presiding Bishop I would add), it was a glorious moment in the history of the Episcopal Church. I am proud to say that a month later Bishop Harris confirmed both me and my son as Episcopalians and three months later baptized my husband. She also preached at my Ordination to the Diaconate in Boston in 1993. Fifteen months later, while teaching at the Yale Institute of Sacred Music, I was ordained a priest.

In one of my early conversations with Bishop Harris, she shared with me that she carried the processional cross in that historic 1974 service in Philadelphia. We cannot underestimate the importance of the courageous people who have gone before us and, despite being threatened and harassed, have changed our view of what is possible.

The Rev. Canon Victoria R. Sirota

“The Philadelphia Eleven,” “The House of Deputies,” “Deaconess,” An Episcopal Dictionary of the Church: A User Friendly Reference for Episcopalians, Don S. Armentrout and Robert Boak Slocum, Editors (Church Publishing, NY) (also available through episcopalchurch.org)

The Philadelphia Eleven, A documentary film by Margo Guernsey and Nikki Bramley, 2023 (Kinema.com).

Project Canterbury, “What is a Deaconess?” by Royden Keith Yerkes, Sycamore, Illinois: The Central House for Deaconesses, no date. (anglicanhistory.org)

Carter Heyward, The Rev. Dr., “Interview with Carter Heyward on Women’s Ordination and 1977 Sermon at Duke Chapel,” October 21, 2020, Brevard, North Carolina.