Women’s History Month: 7 Christian denominations that voted to allow female ordination

The Episcopal Church – 1976

The Episcopal Church voted to approve the ordination of women at their 1976 General Convention, having previously allowed them to become deacons in 1970.

The vote was influenced in part by the July 1974 decision of the Church of the Advocate in North Philadelphia to ordain 11 women as Episcopal priests in defiance of Church rules.

Charles V. Willie, a prominent African American Episcopal lay leader, preached at the service, declaring “it is a Christian duty to disobey unjust laws.”

“We stand ready to endure the hardship and the personal sacrifice necessary to pull the Episcopal Church from its mistaken way of refusing to acknowledge the full personhood of women,” stated Willie, as reported by The New York Times.

Thirty years after the Episcopal Church voted to allow female ordination, the denomination elected its first female leader, Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori.