As we celebrate 50 years of Women’s Ordination to the Priesthood, we thank God for the leadership of women in The Episcopal Church!

Follow along the remainder of 2024 as we profile women clergy of The Diocese of Atlanta.

Fifty years ago this summer, an event occurred that shook The Episcopal Church just as surely as the Watergate hearings going on at the same time shook the nation. On July 29, 1974, at the Church of the Advocate in Philadelphia, 11 women were ordained Episcopal priests.

News of the ordinations was shocking. As a child and teenager growing up an Episcopalian in Atlanta, it had never occurred to me to question why girls weren’t acolytes, much less why women weren’t priests. But that question had occurred to many other people. How could a church that believes men and women are both created in God’s image justify treating women as less than equal?

The Church struggled with that question for a long time. In 1970, the General Convention — a triennial meeting of lay, clergy and bishop representatives from each diocese — approved the ordination of women to the diaconate, but not to the priesthood. When the measure failed again in 1973, many believed it was time for an act of ecclesiastical disobedience. The result was the ordinations of the 11 women in Philadelphia.

The Rev. Pat Merchant, now an Atlanta priest, read the Gospel at the service as a newly ordained deacon. She remembers the liturgy included the bishop asking if anyone knew any reason why it should not proceed. In response, a group of male clergy came forward and read a statement. “You can no more make these bodies of women priests than you can turn stones into bread,” they said.

“You could have heard a pin drop in the place,” Pat remembers.

The Rev. Paul Washington, rector of Church of the Advocate, acknowledged the criticism in his welcoming remarks.

“The dilemma is what is one to do when the democratic process, the political dynamics, and the legal guidelines are out of step with the moral imperative which says, ‘Now is the time!’ May we praise the Lord for those this day who act in obedience to God.”

In the half-century since that day, thousands of women have become priests. Today in The Diocese of Atlanta, about half of its more than 300 priests are women.

So much has changed in those 50 years. In 1976, the Church finally gave its official approval to women’s ordination. Eloise Lester became the first woman priest in Atlanta in May 1977. Claiborne Jones became the first woman rector in the diocese at Church of the Epiphany in Decatur in 1985. Nan Peete became the diocese’s first woman Canon to the Ordinary on Bishop’s Staff in 1989. Angela Shepherd became the first Black woman rector in 2018 at St. Bartholomew’s in Atlanta.

When I came back to Atlanta in 2004 to be the rector of St. Dunstan’s, the number of women rectors in the diocese could sit around the same table for lunch. Today, I can’t begin to name all the women rectors.

Barbara Harris, the acolyte for that 1974 service, was ordained a priest in 1980 and in 1989 was elected the first female bishop. In June 2006, Katharine Jefferts Schori was elected presiding bishop of the Episcopal Church, the symbolic head of the denomination.

But just as having an African-American president did not end the sin of racism in our country, a female presiding bishop did not end sexism in the church.

Many women still find their vocational paths impeded by their gender. The church’s own nationwide studies show it takes women longer to become rectors than it does their male colleagues, and they are less likely to be called to lead large, multi-staff churches. As in other professions there is still an earnings gap between male and female clergy.

There is still work to be done.

But on this anniversary, we celebrate the progress that has been made and remember with gratitude the courageous women and men who made it possible.

One of those men, Bishop Robert DeWitt, who was censured by his colleagues for presiding at the Philadelphia ordinations, put it in perspective at the 25th anniversary.

“The Philadelphia 11 belong with the likes of Susan B. Anthony and Rosa Parks,” he said. “They are of that goodly company of women through history who have seen that in overcoming the restrictions which circumscribed their own lives, they brought release to countless others.

“The human family is the beneficiary.”

This article by The Rev. Tricia Templeton, rector of St. Dunstan’s, first appeared as an op-ed in the Atlanta Journal Constitution on July 29, 2014. It has been updated to reflect the current events of the diocese.