Women Priests in the Episcopal and Lutheran Churches: How They Fought for and Won Ordination

Women's ordination in the Episcopal Church and Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA) represents one of the most significant institutional shifts in modern Christianity. Between the 1960s and 1990s, these two major Protestant denominations formally opened the priesthood to women—a change that required theological reinterpretation, organizational upheaval, and the determination of female clergy who often had to fight twice: once for the right to be ordained, and again for the right to practice.

The Episcopal Church: From Irregular Ordinations to Official Acceptance

The Episcopal Church's path to women priests began in the shadows. In 1974, eleven women were ordained by sympathetic male bishops in Philadelphia without official church authorization—an act of deliberate defiance. These "irregular" ordinations forced the church's hand. Three years later, at the 1976 General Convention, the Episcopal Church officially authorized women's ordination to the priesthood. The vote was not unanimous; significant resistance came from Anglo-Catholic traditionalists who argued that apostolic tradition required male priests.

Winning the priesthood did not end the fight. Ordained women faced bishops who refused to license them, parishes that rejected them, and a 1977 canon that allowed clergy to opt out of serving under a female priest. The battle for women bishops took another three decades. Not until 2006 did the General Convention approve women as bishops, with Katherine Jefferts Schori becoming the first female Presiding Bishop in 2006. Even then, some conservative congregations left the denomination in protest.

The Lutheran Church: Theological Debate and Incremental Change

Lutheran ordination of women followed a different timeline but similar resistance. The American Lutheran Church approved women pastors in 1970, making it one of the earliest mainline denominations to do so. The larger Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod rejected women's ordination entirely and remains opposed. The Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA), formed in 1988 through a merger, initially inherited conflicting positions before formally approving women pastors in 1992 and women bishops in 2001.

Lutheran arguments centered on biblical interpretation and the meaning of "headship" in scripture. Progressives pointed to Galatians 3:28 ("neither male nor female") and argued that ordination is a call from God regardless of gender. Conservatives cited 1 Corinthians 11 and 14 and 1 Timothy 2, reading them as prohibitions on women in leadership roles. The ELCA's approval in 1992 came after theological commissions studied the question for years, concluding that gender was not a theological barrier to ministry.

How the Campaigns Actually Worked

Women and male allies used multiple strategies. They filed formal overtures (proposals) at church conventions, built grassroots networks of supporters, published theological scholarship reinterpreting scripture and tradition, and organized women clergy caucuses. The Philadelphia Eleven's illegal ordination was a calculated risk designed to make the issue impossible to ignore. Similarly, women who were ordained but denied placement sued their churches and appealed to church courts, forcing institutional responses.

Key figures like Pauli Murray (an African American Episcopal priest and legal scholar), Phyllis Trible (biblical scholar), and countless unnamed women in pews and parishes sustained the movement. They built coalitions with civil rights and feminist movements, framing women's ordination not as a sectarian issue but as a justice question. Church publications, women's conferences, and seminary curricula became battlegrounds where theological arguments were made and remade.

Why This Mattered—and Still Does

These victories mattered because they reshaped what millions of Christians understood about authority, leadership, and theological interpretation. They demonstrated that a male-only priesthood was not immutable doctrine but a practice that could be changed through argument and institutional pressure. For women, ordination meant access to positions of spiritual authority, economic security, and the ability to shape theology from inside institutional power. For the churches themselves, it signaled openness to cultural and moral change—though at the cost of internal fracture.

The campaigns also exposed how deeply gender assumptions were embedded in Christian practice. Even after formal approval, women priests and bishops encountered resistance from parishioners, other clergy, and institutional structures not designed to accommodate them. Some conservative Anglicans and Lutherans left their denominations over women's ordination, establishing alternative jurisdictions. The fight for women's ordination thus became a proxy for larger questions about tradition, scripture, authority, and who gets to decide what Christianity means.

The Ongoing Reality

Formal approval did not mean instant integration. Many parishes still resist female leadership. Some dioceses and synods dragged their feet on implementation. Women clergy report earning less than male counterparts, facing scrutiny of their appearance and demeanor in ways men do not, and encountering parishioners who refuse to be counseled or baptized by them. The "stained glass ceiling" in both churches persists: women remain underrepresented in senior positions and prestigious parishes, even fifty years after initial ordinations.

Sources

• Episcopal Church General Convention records, 1976 and 2006 (official church documents on ordination approvals)
• Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, official statements on women's ordination, 1992 and 2001
• Pauli Murray's autobiography and legal scholarship on women's ordination in the Episcopal Church