The Philadelphia Eleven is a new documentary that tells the story of the first eleven women to become priests in the Episcopal Church. They were ordained in Philadelphia on July 29, 1974. Hence, “the Philadelphia Eleven.” This summer, the Episcopal Church will celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of their ordination.
Ordination Service at the Church of the Advocate
In an act of civil disobedience, a group of women and their supporters organize their ordination to become Episcopal priests in 1974. The Church of the Advocate in Philadelphia welcomes them, but change is no small task. The women are harassed, threatened and banned from stepping on church property.
In this feature-length documentary film, we meet the women who succeed in building a movement that transforms an age-old institution, and challenges the very essence of patriarchy within Christendom.
It seems so easy now to write that line, to state it as an historical fact. But the truth is that it was a long and contentious battle within the church before and after 1974. And that ordination service in Philadelphia was anything but conventional. The service didn’t take place on Philadelphia’s tony mainline where one might expect such an event. Instead, it was hosted by a Black Episcopal church, in a packed building, and was covered by every major news network in the United States.
The ordination wasn’t approved by the church. According to canon law at that time, priests had to be men.
Fifty years ago, in the midst of decades of discussion and wrangling regarding the status of women in the church, three male bishops and eleven women (and more than a few deacons and witnessing priests) took matters into their own hands. They broke their clerical vows and church rules — in the process, they upended an entire denomination to carry out these “irregular” ordinations (that’s what opponents called them). The church nearly split, people and congregations left the denomination, local priests who supported their new female colleagues were brought up on ecclesiastical charges and lost their positions. The women themselves were shunned and threatened.
That’s what the documentary is about — a group of women and men who broke the rules. In doing so, they changed an entire church and its future.
(AWSC is investigating ways of making this documentary available here in Aotearoa/New Zealand.)
