UBE Gala Tribute to Black Women in the Priesthood
posted July 8th, 2007 at 5:40 pm by Betty
The final evening at the UBE Conference was fabulous! I wish we could have more evenings like this one - good food, iced tea, and chocolate! Ayesha had kindly squeezed me in at her family table so I had close to a front row seat. It seemed that everyone was in rare form and mood to celebrate, and celebrate, and celebrate. The spotlight was on black women - their gifts and talents, their compassion and love, their creative brilliance. The evening was entitled “A Gala Tribute to 30 Years of Black Women in the Priesthood.”
First let me tell you what I learned about the first woman that was honored: the Rev. Pauli Murray. You might want to see if you can get a copy of her autobiography : Song in a Weary Throat: An American Pilgrimage. (Try the public library.)
The Rev Pauli Murray was the first black female and second African-American Episcopal priest, who served in the ’70s and ’80s at the Church of Holy Nativity in Baltimore. Born in Baltimore, MD, in 1910, and graduating from Hunter College in New York, she became a teacher in 1933. During this time she wrote her first novel, Angel of the Desert. Her most famous poem is “Dark Testament.”
Later, when she attempted to enter the University of North Carolina Law School, she was told no - the school simply did not admit African-Americans. Not even help from the NAACP and a friendship with Eleanor Roosevelt could change that part of her story. But Pauli Murray was undaunted and dedicated her life to the struggle for equality and justice. Eventually, she graduated from Howard University Law School as the first woman and first in her class of 1944.
In 1946, Murray was jailed for refusing to sit on the broken seats on the back of the bus. But that did nothing to stop her cry for justice. She went on to publish important articles on civil rights. She received a masters of law from the University of California at Berkeley, was hired by the New York law firm Paul, Weiss, Rifkin, Wharton, and Garrison, and lectured at the Ghana School of Law at Accra. President Kennedy appointed her to the President’s Commission on the Status of Women Committee on Civil and Political Rights and she became Distinguished Professor of Law and Politics at Brandeis University 1968-1973. It was in 1973 that she entered General Theological Seminary and was ordained to the priesthood. What gifts, what spirit, what imagination!
Read more about Pauli Murray by clicking here: http://www.tcnj.edu/~coar2/biography/murray.htm
On this Gala Evening we heard many stories of women led by the spirit - but having to go against the grain - against the popular mandate - and in some cases hearing a call that only they believed in. Their stories were filled with exclusions and repudiations but also with welcomes and triumphs. And in all this, there was a melancholy and pathos hanging in the air: why should our world be so divided into categories? Why are we so cruel to those who are not just like us? Why do we continue to deal out harm to one another? Why can’t we see that we all carry that spark of divinity within us - that the spirit of peace lives in all of us, if we could but see it, and feel it.
I couldn’t even begin to name all the people that contributed to this evening. The Rev. Canon Nelson Pinder, the UBE President, the Rev. Jennifer Baskervillle-Burrows, Co-Dean of the Conference, and the Rev. Dr. Katherine L. Ward, of Our Savior Chinese Episcopal Church, who read off her poetry as one who channels grace. And the dynamo women who stood up and told it the way it was: the charismatic Rev. Dr. Sandye A. Wilson and the Rev. Cheryl A.E. Parris. Well, as I said before, why can’t we have more evenings like this one!
The highlight of the evening was the honoring of 5 women Bishops:
(1) The Right Rev. Barbara C. Harris, who was elected suffragan (assisting) bishop of the Diocese of Massachusetts in 1988.
http://www.upenn.edu/almanac/v42/n25/harris.html
http://www.edow.org/diocese/bishops/harris_bio.html
(2) The Right Rev. Gayle E. Harris, who was elected suffragan bishop of the Diocese of Massachusetts, succeding Barbara Harris.
http://andromeda.rutgers.edu/~lcrew/bishops/0407.html
http://www.diomass.org/welcome_message.html
(3) The Right Rev. Dena Harrison, elected as Bishop Suffragan in the Diocese of Texas in 2006, becoming the 13th woman elected as a bishop of the Episcopal Church.
http://www.episcopalchurch.org/3577_74132_ENG_HTM.htm?menu=undefined+
http://www.virtueonline.org/portal/modules/news/print.php?storyid=4817
(4) The Right Rev. Dr. Carol J. Gallager, member of the Cherokee nation and elected Bishop in the Diocese of Southern Virginia in 2002. http://www.thefreelibrary.com/ECUSA+diocese+elects+first+indigenous+woman+(Carol+J.+Gallagher)…-a030317023
http://thewitness.org/agw/gallagher121704.html
(5) THe Right Rev. Bavi Edna Rivera, was the first Hispanic woman elected as Bishop Suffragan in the Diocese of Olympia.
http://www.cdsp.edu/crossings/cr-winter06.html
http://www.olympia.anglican.org/inthenews/riveraelectedsuffragan2.cfm
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