Philadelphia Eleven

O God of Persistent Grace, you called the Philadelphia Eleven to the priesthood and granted them courage and boldness to respond, thereby opening the eyes of your church to the giftedness and equality of all: grant us so to hear, trust, and follow your Holy Spirit wherever she may lead, that the gifts of all your people may flourish throughout the earth, through Christ our Savior. Amen.

At Girl Scout camp in the summer of 1974, I opened a letter from my parents which included a short column describing the ordination of eleven women in Philadelphia, PA, against the then canons of the church. Freshly confirmed, I was horrified: these women had broken the rules. I was also deeply intrigued. I heard “there is something here for you,” but I had no one to help me figure out what. The ordination of women may have been a discussion in other parts of the country, but it wasn’t in places I had lived. Reading that column was as strange as reading a declaration that flying pigs had been discovered on a remote island. Even after the denomination voted to ordain women in 1976, my particular parts of the Episcopal church remained resolutely opposed. I did not meet my first woman priest until I was twenty-one years old.

Moving forward to the summer of 1999, I gathered with women, lay and ordained, to mark the twenty-fifth anniversary of the ordination of women in the Episcopal Church. At the time, I was in the fourth year of my ordination, more than a third of the people in my seminary class were women and the church had consecrated its first woman bishop – The Rt. Reverend Barbara Harris – ten years earlier in 1989. Interestingly, Bishop Harris had been crucifer at that first ordination of women 25 years earlier. Listening firsthand to their stories, and the stories of others around them at the time, I recognized the deep debt I, and the church, owed these remarkable women and the male clergy who had facilitated their ordination.  

July 29, 2024, marks the fiftieth anniversary of the ordination of women at the Church of the Advocate in Philadelphia, PA. Earlier this summer, the 81st General Convention of the Episcopal Church, meeting in Louisville, KY, voted to commemorate the Philadelphia Eleven (as they have come to be known). There is a certain sense of coming full circle as it was also in Louisville that the 64th General Convention meeting in 1973, voted down the ordination of women. (In 1973, even though the majority of deputies had voted for ordination, the high number of “divided” or split diocesan votes prevented passage of the resolution.) The story of the path to ordination is powerfully told in a new documentary, The Philadelphia Eleven. The film is being screened in various locations around the country. You can click here to purchase a ticket to watch online during the 50th Anniversary weekend on your own schedule between 12 PM EST, July 26, through 12 PM EST, July 30.