Revisiting "The Sisterhood of the Red Blazer"

Here in the Diocese of Los Angeles as we prepare for our 2024 Diocesan Convention in Riverside next week, we are also preparing to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the ordinations of The Philadelphia Eleven … the first women ordained to the priesthood in the Episcopal Church in July 1974.

We will welcome the Reverend Dr. Carter Heyward as our keynote speaker and as the presider at our Convention Eucharist where we will use the liturgical Propers appointed for the Feast of the Philadelphia Eleven added to our church calendar at last summer’s General Convention. The Reverend Norma Guerra will be our preacher, the procession will include all the clergywomen present at convention and the festival color will be red. It will be a grand and glorious occasion.

And planning it brought me back to this reflection I wrote a decade or so ago:

My first diocesan convention was back in 1987. Back then I was a lay delegate from my parish (St. Paul's, Ventura) and my credential read "Mrs. Anthony Russell" ... never mind that the sum total of MR Anthony Russell's involvement in the work of the Diocese of Los Angeles was to show up on Christmas Eve and Easter Sunday.

It was back in the day when we didn't dare run more than one woman in any of the elections. I remember a literal coin toss between two women clergy one year about which ONE would run for General Convention Deputy because the diocese would never send TWO women! (Lynn Jay beat out Liz Habecker.)

It was time when if we sang a hymn that wasn't in the hymnal or -- God forbid -- used a liturgy with expansive language -- there would be a queue at the microphone afterwards with dour clergymen asking for a "point of personal privilege" to express their outrage at the “Abandonment of the Faith Received from the Fathers.”

And I remember when I was in the ordination process being told it wasn't a good idea to wear my red blazer (and I LOVED my red blazer!) because red was a "power color" and I'd better pack it away until after I got safely ordained.

So yes, the church has changed in the decades I've been a delegate to the Annual Meeting of the Diocese of Los Angeles -- and my response to that versicle is "Thanks be to God!" There may be a few left who yearn for those halcyon days of yesteryear when women delegates were named "Mrs. Husband" and we knew better than to run more than one of us in any given election. But the rest of us are celebrating the steps forward this church has taken to overcome its sexism and are going to "keep on keepin' on" until we are fully the inclusive Body of Christ we are called to be. We may not be there yet … but we are not going back!

However, some of us are going to get on the road shortly for Riverside. Prayers invited from all ya'll for my diocese as we gather in convention ... and now I just need to pack my red blazer and I'm off!

And when I got to Riverside I found a whole cohort of sister clergy who had read the piece and packed their red blazers … and from there Rachel Nyback (pictured above) and I coined the phrase “The Sisterhood of the Red Blazer.”

This year as we gather in Riverside we will celebrate the 50^th anniversary of the sisters who shattered the stained glass ceiling and paved the way for women called to the vocation of ordained ministry to respond to that call AND validated the vocations of women called to lay ministry as a vocation -- not as a default because the path to ordination was closed to them.

And so we’re encouraging red as the festival color of the day -- not just for the stoles women clergy will wear in procession or for the photo we’ll take to mark the occasion at the end of the Eucharist -- but as an outward and visible symbol of the faith received from the Mothers (and Fathers) as we all move forward together into God’s future!

See you there! (I’ll be the one in the red blazer!)