The First Women Ordained in the Episcopal Church(And a Little Girl’s Dream)

By: Debbie Burnham-Kidwell

A little girl, five or six years young, dreamed she wore a black jacket with a stiff white collar circled around her neck.  She awoke and ran to tell her mother the news:  Mommy, I had a dream. When I grow up, I’m going to be a Pastor.

Mommy’s response was quick and to the point.  Girls can’t be Pastors.

Why?

Because God is our Father, and Jesus was a man, and all the disciples were men.  Only men can be Pastors.

I could not believe my mother was wrong, but what she said didn’t sound right.  I was soon to learn that the church of my youth agreed with her, and never has it wavered: God calls only men to the clerical life.  Women need not apply.  And I didn’t.

Instead, I grew up and liberated myself from church, which wasn’t an act without risk, for the only church I knew was clear that when a person leaves the church, they lose God.

Imagine my delight when I discovered that God still loved me!  And I stilled loved God!  After that, I began to sense God’s Spirit nudging me forward in small gentle moments that flowed through my being, sometimes consciously, but mostly they abided quietly inside me, until I awoke to another small nudge.

Fast forward to the summer of 1974.  I was walking past my television, tuned to the Evening News, and I glanced at the screen.  I saw women dressed in white clerical garb topped with white collars.  I heard only part of the message: first women ... ordained ... Episcopal Church.  I’d never heard of the Episcopal Church, but I knew what ordained meant.  My first thought: That church must be evolving.  Maybe there’s hope for that church.

It would be nice if I could say that I immediately ran out to find an Episcopal Church, but I didn’t.  I was busy preparing myself for a profession to which I felt spiritually-called, and I never regretted my choice: I became a Librarian.  Then one day, in the course of my work, I stumbled upon a magazine titled Daughters of Sarah.  In that issue, if I remember correctly, I saw a small article about the women I’d seen on television some years earlier.

They were called the Philadelphia 11, and the article read something like this: The women were vilified by people who considered male genitalia to be an essential qualification for clergymen....  The immediate response of the Episcopal Church was to proclaim the women’s ordination to be an act of disobedience, but two years later the Church reversed their decision and authorized the ordination of women....  Progress....  But it was hard for women priests to find jobs in leading churches, so they became theologians or chaplains, served as supply priests, slowly advanced into small churches, or served as assistants to rectors.

Later, I would read two articles that sharpened my understanding of God and the church:

Micah 6:8: God has shown you, [O woman], what is good. And what does God require of you?  To act justly, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with your God.  In my early church years, I was required to memorize lots of Bible verses from the New Testament, but Micah’s words were new to me, and they spoke to a theme that ran through the Bible I’d come to know.

I also learned from The Daughters that the Hebrew word Ruach was a feminine word that meant wind, breath, and spirit.  This was a wind that breathed into me the Spirit’s gift of clarity:  God was not He or She, but a mixture of both, and neither, and much more.  What more did the naysayers need to see that women were part of the Body of Christ—a Body that reached out to everyone, no exceptions.  It was confirmation enough for me, unchurched as I was, to say that women, in their diversity, were as capable as men in discerning a call and in serving the Church and the World.  I knew this issue was about justice, just as I was sure Jesus knew.

A Spirit-filled moment, yes, but still I hesitated.

I was not married in a church, but I was married in a courthouse that was neighbor to an Episcopal Church in a very conservative town.  So, I knew where it was when, as a member of a controversial organization for women, I was delegated to contact a different church to ask if we could use one of their rooms for our meetings (how incongruent was that?).  Their members turned us down, but their sympathetic minister suggested I try the Episcopal Church.  I did, and they welcomed us, and for the first time in over 20 years, I took a Spirit-guided step into a church—not into the nave, but into a meeting room.

Several years later, an Episcopalian I met through that encounter encouraged me to attend a special church service with her.  We have a new priest, she said, and I think you will like her!  I couldn’t resist the invitation, so I breathed in a big breath of Spirit and took a leap of faith.

What childish joy I felt when I saw a woman, flowing in priestly vestments topped with a white collar, welcoming me into the Episcopal Church.

I thought about the eleven brave women who refused to deny God’s call, and, in time, I embraced the Episcopal Church, which was unafraid—indeed, emboldened—to broaden its commitment to act justly, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with God.  Without those women, and the Spirit’s persistence, it seems unlikely that I would ever have walked through those sanctuary doors.

As for the little girl who dreamed of being a pastor, she may have followed a different calling, but she smiles today, and she is delighted to be celebrating the...

Fiftieth Anniversary of the Philadelphia Eleven’s Act of Obedience to their God.