Episcopal Press and News
Anniversary Sparks Call for First Woman Bishop
Episcopal News Service. August 9, 1984 [84159]
PHILADELPHIA (DPS, Aug. 9) -- A service marking the 10th anniversary of the first (irregular) women's ordinations in the Episcopal Church opened a drive here to ordain the church's first woman bishop.
Over 400 persons attended the Eucharist at the Church of the Advocate where three bishops, on July 29, 1974, ordained the women who became known as the "Philadelphia 11." That protest against the Episcopal Church's all-male priesthood was followed by the General Convention vote in 1976 allowing ordination of women priests.
Celebrating the Eucharist in the cavernous stone church decorated with colorful murals and banners and dotted with helium-filled balloons were four of the original 11 women priests -- The Rev. Carter Heyward and the Rev. Suzanne Hiatt, both associate professors at the Episcopal Divinity School in Cambridge, Mass.; the Rev. Alison M. Cheek, recently returned from New Zealand, where she was consultant to a seminary; and the Rev. Alla Bozarth-Campbell, who heads an ecumenical center for women in Minneapolis.
Also present were three other principal figures from the 1974 rites which defied Episcopal Church canons -- the Rev. Paul Washington, the rector who allowed his church to be used for the "irregular" ordinations; and two of the bishops who participated, the Rt. Rev. Antonio Ramos, at that time bishop of Costa Rica and now a National Council of Churches official; and the Rt. Rev. Robert DeWitt, a "resigned" bishop who for several years edited the Witness magazine.
Preaching at the anniversary celebration, Ramos recalled his participation in the historic event and said he regretted only that he had not joined DeWitt and two retired bishops in the actual ordaining act, the "laying of hands."
Ramos called the effort to open the priesthood to women "a partial victory, not a total one." In 10 years, he noted, more than 500 women have been ordained, but many are not able to find employment as parish priests. (Only 83 of the 565 ordained women are in charge of parishes). "There are still bishops who refuse to ordain women," he said, "and there are still people who refuse to take Communion from a woman."
The Rev. David Gracie, chaplain at Temple University, read a document drafted by planners of the service to launch the campaign to bring women into the church's all-male episcopate. "We call upon the Episcopal Church," said the statement, "to proceed urgently and with dispatch to the election and ordination of women to the episcopate in order to bring wholeness to this order of ministry, which exists to 'lead, supervise and unite the church.'"
The document said that the church's ministry is "incomplete and divided" because there are no women bishops, and that their addition would be a "healing and fulfilling action."
Supporters of the call to elect women bishops said success might not come for a decade or more. Bishops must be at least 30 years old and be elected by a diocese to serve in that diocese. Half the dioceses in the church must approve the choice.
In 1976, when the church approved ordination of women as priests, it also approved the election and consecration of women as bishops. At least two women have been candidates in previous elections -- Canon Mary Michael Simpson in New York, and the Rev. Jean Dementi in Alaska.
Hiatt and others who led the movement for women's ordination in the 70's by violating church canons have decided to press the campaign for women bishops by acting within the system. One planner of the anniversary event said there had been consideration of an "irregular" consecration of a woman bishop, "but cooler heads prevailed," and the idea was dismissed as unwise.
The first woman bishop, they note, is most likely to be a suffragan rather than a diocesan bishop.
Other services marking the anniversary of the Philadelphia ordinations were held in Rochester, N.Y., Washington, D.C., and Detroit, Mich.