Today is the 45th anniversary of the first women ordained to the priesthood in the Episcopal Church.
From Elizabeth Kaeton:
Today is the feast of Mary and Martha of Bethany. It is also the anniversary of the Ordination of the Philadelphia Eleven, July 29, 1974, at the Church of the Advocate in Philadelphia, where Rev. Paul Washington was rector and civil rights leader and Barbara C Harris was senior warden and served as crucifer in the service.
These women were blessed to be blessings and the whole Church has been blessed by their courage and witness and faith. I am filled with gratitude today for the ministry of women - of the laity and of the ordained - who have the courage to follow their vocation to serve in and through an institutional church which has often treated them with hostility.
In your prayers today, please call out the names of these women and raise them to God in a prayer of gratitude: Merrill Bittner, Alla Renée Bozarth (Bozarth-Campbell), Alison Mary Cheek, Emily Clark Hewitt, Isabel Carter Heyward, Suzanne Radley Hiatt, Marie Moorefield Fleischer, Jeannette Ridlon Piccard, Betty Bone Schiess, Katrina Martha van Alstyne Welles Swanson, Nancy Constantine Hatch Wittig.
Please also call out the names of the courageous bishops who ordained them: Daniel Corrigan, retired bishop suffragan of Colorado; Robert L. DeWitt, then recently resigned Bishop of Pennsylvania; and Edward R. Welles, retired Bishop of West Missouri. José Ramos, Bishop of Costa Rica, was also present at the service but did not participate in the act of ordination due to his young and active episcopate.
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