docs.google.com/document/d/1tdNWhzA9RVY9EzQZz7QJA_hmiUvjC-Xm6ZewhlnAVu8/edit?usp=sharing 

The sermon linked above was given at St. John's, Lafayette Square, to honor Frederick Douglass, Prophet for Freedom and advocate for justice. Born into slavery in 1818, Douglass escaped to freedom and spent his life fighting for the abolition of slavery, racial justice, and human dignity. He wrote,

The slave auctioneer’s bell and the church going bell chime with each other, and the bitter cries of the heart-broken slave are drowned in the religious shouts of his pious master.

Douglass denounces false, deceitful Christians. And that church bell he mentions? Quite possibly the Revere bell at St. John's which sits across from the White House and the former slave pens of Washington D.C. The pens are gone, but the bell remains, and sadly, the lies and deceit ring out again.

Congratulations to the winners of the 2025 Woman Composer Sunday composition contest, sponsored by the American Guild of Organists Task Force for Gender Equity:

• 1st Place, Concert Work – Brenda Portman, "Diptych for Organ" 

• 1st Place, Short Work – Maureen Howell, "Reflection on Kingsfold"

• 2nd Place, Short Work – Evelyn Larter, "Here's One"

• 3rd Place, Short Work – Miriam Reveley, "Adagio in C Minor"

• Young Composer Prize – Celina Kobetitsch, "Fantasy on Noël Nouvelet"

The Women's Sacred Music Project was happy to donate prize money for this competition, and to sponsor Evelyn Larter's piece, "Here's One." Kudos to Evelyn and her prize-winning peers! 

Please explore our new blog series, More About Resounding Voices, available under the Projects tab! 

FEBRUARY 2025

O Kou Aloha No (The Queen’s Prayer)

This late 19th Century Hawaiian prayer was included in Resounding Voices both as a reminder of an ignored chapter in U.S. history and as a call to honor the marginalized. It is a useful prayer for Lenten services or any service of confession and assurance. It would also be a significant addition to any services in May for this year’s celebration of Asian American, Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander Heritage Month.

Liliuokalani was the last monarch of Hawaii. She was well educated and an accomplished musician and composer, writing some 160 songs about Hawaiian life. She became Queen in 1890 following the death of her brother Kalakaua. He had been forced to accept a new constitution that effectively disenfranchised the native Hawaiians. Liliuokalani attempted to write a fairer constitution. However, in a shocking coup, she was forced by a group of businessmen, assisted by US Marines not acting under orders from Washington, to surrender her country into the “protection” of the United States. Imprisoned, she wrote “O kou aloha nö,” commonly known as The Queen’s Prayer.

This hymn is sung at the absolution every week at the Episcopal Cathedral of St. Andrew in Honolulu. The words ask God to forgive her American oppressors. Roughly translated, the meaning is, “You are my light, your glory my support. Behold not with malevolence the sins of humankind but forgive and cleanse. And so, lord, beneath your wings be our peace forever more.”

There are several performance options to consider. Use it in a small group midweek Lenten series so that it becomes familiar. Have a soloist or small unison chorus sing it in worship for several weeks, inviting the congregation to hum along. 

We are excited to share with you our most recent work: 73 new hymns by, for, and about women. The collection is called Resounding Voices, and it is a partnership between WSMP and The Hymn Society of the United States and Canada. It is ecumenical, interfaith, and features an assortment of styles and spiritualities. Download the collection, linked as part of our Publications under the Projects tab above, and be Blessed! NOTE: the 2025 revised edition, featuring a number of important updates, is now available! 

Have a listen and learn more about Tonya Taylor-Dorsey's "Lamb of God," one of the new hymns featured in the collection.

The Philadelphia Eleven

July 29, 1974

Fifty years ago, on July 29, 1974, the Feast of Saint Mary and Saint Martha, eleven brave women were ordained as Episcopal priests by three courageous bishops at Church of the Advocate in Philadelphia. The bishops claimed that “obedience to the Spirit” justified the ordinations. This was before the ordination of women had been officially approved by the Episcopal Church. The women were threatened and harassed.

To understand the place of women in the Episcopal Church, it is helpful to know that an Episcopal deaconess movement began in 1857 in Baltimore with the nursing of wounded soldiers. The General Convention of the Episcopal Church adopted the first canon on Deaconesses in 1889. This was different from the role of male deacons and involved ministry to “the sick, the afflicted and the poor,” as well as “permanency,” being set apart by the wearing of a habit. Although celibacy was not officially required, if a deaconess got married, “her appointment was vacated.”  Deaconesses were not involved in the liturgical acts of the church.

Lay women were only given voice and vote in the House of Deputies in 1970. Although the decision to treat deaconesses the same as male deacons was approved at the 1970 General Convention, the ordination of women to the priesthood and consecration to the episcopate was debated and failed to pass at that convention in Houston and at the 1973 General Convention in Louisville. There was great concern that this decision might result in a split in the Episcopal Church, as well as tremendous frustration by those women who were already serving as deacons.

The Rev. Dr. Carter Heyward, in a YouTube Interview given on October 21, 2020, in Brevard, North Carolina, spoke about the risk they were taking in 1974, “We all assumed that none of us would ever be accepted as priests in the Episcopal Church, that our ordination would mean that somehow, we ourselves would be defrocked, that we would be sent away. But what we hoped that what it would do would be to crack open the world of the Episcopal Church for other women coming along behind us and help the church realize that it had to open its ordination rites to women.” She pointed out that women were already allowed to be ministers in many of the other Protestant churches.

The women who were ordained irregularly were: Merrill Bittner, Alla Bozarth-Campbell, Alison Cheek, Emily Hewitt, Carter Heyward, Suzanne Hiatt, Marie Moorefield, Jeanette Piccard, Betty Schiess, Katrina Swanson, and Nancy Wittig. The bishops presiding were Daniel Corrigan, Robert DeWitt, and Edward Welles II.

Four more women were ordained in Saint Stephen and the Incarnation Parish in Washington D.C. in September 1975, Lee McGee, Alison Palmer, Betty Rosenberg, and Diane Tickell.

On September 15, 1976, the House of Bishops passed the change in canon law to include women, and the House of Deputies passed it the next day.  The House of Bishops affirmed the validity of the women who had been “irregularly” ordained by requiring “an act of completion”, “a liturgical incorporation of what was done on those two occasions.”  All the women completed what was required within the next year, except for Marie Moorefield, who became a United Methodist minister.

The first woman to be regularly ordained a priest was Jacqueline Means, ordained on January 1, 1977. Pauli Murray, the first African American woman, was ordained an Episcopal priest on January 8, 1977.

Interestingly, the first woman bishop in the entire Anglican Communion, The Right Rev. Barbara Harris, attended the Church of the Advocate in Philadelphia, and served as an acolyte for that historic 1974 service. Ordained a deacon in 1979 and a priest in 1980, she was consecrated a bishop on February 11, 1989, in Hynes Auditorium in Boston, Massachusetts.

I was there for Bishop Harris’s Consecration. Despite verbal protests to her consecration (handled masterfully by the Presiding Bishop I would add), it was a glorious moment in the history of the Episcopal Church. I am proud to say that a month later Bishop Harris confirmed both me and my son as Episcopalians and three months later baptized my husband. She also preached at my Ordination to the Diaconate in Boston in 1993. Fifteen months later, while teaching at the Yale Institute of Sacred Music, I was ordained a priest.

In one of my early conversations with Bishop Harris, she shared with me that she carried the processional cross in that historic 1974 service in Philadelphia. We cannot underestimate the importance of the courageous people who have gone before us and, despite being threatened and harassed, have changed our view of what is possible.

The Rev. Canon Victoria R. Sirota

“The Philadelphia Eleven,” “The House of Deputies,” “Deaconess,” An Episcopal Dictionary of the Church: A User Friendly Reference for Episcopalians, Don S. Armentrout and Robert Boak Slocum, Editors (Church Publishing, NY) (also available through episcopalchurch.org)

The Philadelphia Eleven, A documentary film by Margo Guernsey and Nikki Bramley, 2023 (Kinema.com).

Project Canterbury, “What is a Deaconess?” by Royden Keith Yerkes, Sycamore, Illinois: The Central House for Deaconesses, no date. (anglicanhistory.org)

Carter Heyward, The Rev. Dr., “Interview with Carter Heyward on Women’s Ordination and 1977 Sermon at Duke Chapel,” October 21, 2020, Brevard, North Carolina.

JANUARY 9, 2021 by JULIA ALFORD

May 31, 2020 Women’s Sacred Music Project is proud to share the World Premiere of “I Cannot Dance, O Love,” which was composed by Sarah Kitten and used text from the Voices Found hymnal by J.W. Janzen. This composition was commissioned through an ongoing partnership with the Young Women Composers Camp. YWCC, which is now Wildflower Composers, aims to amplify the voices of young female-identifying and non-binary composers…

Continue reading

JANUARY 9, 2021 by JULIA ALFORD

Executive Director, Ted Latham, has been nominated by the International Alliance for Women in Music for the 2020 Pauline Alderman Award for his recent chapter on Amy Beach’s music, published by Oxford University Press. Amy Beach, “Phantoms,” Op. 15, No. 2 (1892): Analytical Essays on Music by Women Composers…

Continue reading

AUGUST 8, 2019 by JULIA ALFORD

At its May 15th meeting, the Board of Directors unanimously and enthusiastically approved Dr. Ted Latham as the new Executive Director of the Women’s Sacred Music Project, and Ms. Lisa Willson DeNolfo as the newest member of the Board. Dr. Latham and Ms. Willson DeNolfo’s bios are reprinted below. Welcome, Ted and Lisa! Dr. Edward… 

Continue reading