The Call of Women to Priesthood is Real

I first experienced the joy, reverence, and mystery of serving at the altar at All Souls’ Episcopal Church, Okinawa. My father, a career Army officer, was stationed in Okinawa, and as our family did everywhere we lived, we sought out an Episcopal Church to nurture our family. The kind, elder priest, Father Ray, invited me to serve as an acolyte and trained me in serving at the altar – lighting the candles, helping the priest set the table for communion, and when I got old enough, carrying the cross in procession. This ministry spoke deeply to my soul. I remember feeling wonder and joy at being part of a great mystery at the heart of God.

But then my family moved to Texas and joined a church that didn’t allow girls to serve as acolytes. My mother couldn’t serve as a lay reader, either, which she had done for years. Women and girls were relegated to subordinate roles in the church – not serving on vestry, not seen in worship. I grew into young adulthood in that church anyway, deeply involved in the youth group at the church and in the Diocese of Texas – but I remember a sense of exclusion and anger. In my world, girls could do anything boys could do – except in church. So when I first heard the call to the priesthood at age 16 at summer church camp, I ignored it. Why would I want to be part of leadership in a church that didn’t want me?

God doesn’t give up easily, though. The call stayed in my heart through my young adult period, even when I strayed from the church. It stayed through my career as a CPA and into my time as a young mother, when I went back to the church, first to baptize my children, and then out of a great hunger to know more about Jesus and re-connect with that mystery that had spoken to me so profoundly as a child acolyte. When I became integrally involved with the church once more, the call to priesthood came back almost immediately; and when, after six months of trying to ignore it, I finally spoke to both my rector and my husband about it, they both reacted the same way: “I was wondering when you were going to say something.”

Over two decades later, the call to priesthood (and I see the ministry of bishop as a special type of priesthood) is a part of my identity at a profound level that is hard to describe. Years of standing at the altar in the presence of Jesus Christ have altered my sense of self, of the church, and of the vital, living Body of Christ in the world.

That doesn’t mean that the journey has been easy. The barriers to women’s ordination are no longer canonical, but even supporters in theory can sometimes be obstacles in practice. A prominent sponsor of my ordination strongly advised me to wait until my children were grown before pursuing it – an admonition I can’t imagine a man receiving. When I graduated from seminary, I was assigned to a part-time call, in contrast to the full-time assignment given to the man I was ordained with. At various points in my ministry, others on my ministry teams have pointed to treatment that they don’t believe I would have received had I been male. There have been times when I have been tempted to leave it all behind and enjoy a more leisurely life instead of the very difficult work that ministry sometimes involves. But I haven’t left it behind. The call remains strong.

Three years after I was ordained priest, in 2006, the Rt. Rev. Katharine Jefferts Schori was elected Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church. Mind you, this was 32 years after the first women priests were ordained, and 17 years after the first woman was ordained a bishop (The Rt. Rev. Barbara Harris of blessed memory, in 1989). In 2006, I was an active priest just beginning to plant a new church in the northern suburbs of Phoenix. That ministry was growing by leaps and bounds as people caught the vision of the living Christ in our neighborhood and joined the team. I had been affirmed in my ministry as a priest in many ways, as a curate, an associate, and now as a church planter. And yet I remember exactly where I was and what I was doing when I heard that that Bishop Katharine was elected. I remember the thought that struck my heart at that moment: “This means I’m real. The church believes I’m real.”

The thing is, God has always believed I’m real, and my ordained sisters are real, and the call of women to priesthood is real. If it were not so, the ministry of women would have failed. I believe in the “Gamaliel Test” from Acts 5:33-39: “if this plan or this undertaking is of human origin, it will fail; but if it is of God, you will not be able to overthrow them—in that case you may even be found fighting against God!” The fruits of the Spirit are found in so many ordained women in our church (deacons, priests, and bishops). I look around our diocese and see that many of our most vibrant churches are led by women. I look at the wider church and see a cohort of numerous women bishops bringing new vitality to the Episcopal Church. I give thanks for the 11 women who bravely stood before God and the church on July 29, 1974, to answer God’s call to ordained ministry. Those brave women, and the courageous bishops who ordained them, paved a road for our church that has been fruitful in more ways than they probably imagined on that day.

And I still stand at the altar, my heart pounding, feeling the wonder and joy of being part of a great mystery at the heart of God. Thanks be to God for the gift of ordination, the ministries of ordained women, and the many gifts our sisters bring to the church.