Upcoming Events
Parish Forum
Sunday, August 30, 2026
Hear the latest news from your Vestry. Bring your favorite summer entrée or dessert. Get to know your fellow parishioners.
August 26 — Women’s Equality Day: Our Work of Love and Justice
Each year on August 26, we observe Women’s Equality Day, commemorating the long struggle for women’s right to vote and reflecting on the continuing work of equality. For Christians, this day is more than a historical observance. It invites us to consider what our faith calls us to do when the dignity, voice, and God-given gifts of any person are diminished or denied.
The story of women’s equality is also a story of faithful people who believed that society could more fully reflect God’s justice. Women and men of faith organized, advocated, challenged unjust systems, and persisted when change seemed impossible. Among these early leaders were Quaker women and their communities, whose belief in the spiritual equality of women and men helped provide an important foundation for the American women’s suffrage move-ment.
Faithful Women Who Changed the Church
The Episcopal Church has its own powerful history of women who challenged barriers and expanded our understanding of God’s call to ministry and leadership.
In 1974, eleven women—later known as the Philadelphia Eleven—were ordained to the priesthood in an historic service at the Church of the Advocate in Philadelphia. At the time, the ordination of women to the priesthood was not authorized by the canons of The Episcopal Church. Three retired or resigned Episcopal bishops participated in the ordinations, which resulted in condemnation and significant opposition within the Church. Yet their courageous action helped force the Church to confront the question of whether God’s call to ordained ministry could truly be limited by gender. In 1976, General Convention approved changes allowing women to be ordained to all three orders of ministry, with the changes taking effect in 1977.
Their witness stands alongside that of other remarkable Episcopal women, including the Rev. Dr. Pauli Murray, a pioneering attorney, civil rights advocate, and the first Black woman ordained to the priesthood in The Episcopal Church, and the Rt. Rev. Barbara C. Harris, the first woman ordained a bishop in The Episcopal Church and the wider Anglican Communion. These women remind us that faithful change often begins when someone is willing to stand where others have not yet been willing to stand.
A Prayer for Those to Whom the Sirens Rush
Keep watch, O God, over those who face perils and trials this day. Be with our first responders and those to whom they rush. May they for whom the sirens sound know your presence, your constant love and that our prayers are with them. Amen.
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