WOMEN'S SACRED MUSIC PROJECT
Welcome to the Women's Sacred Music Project! 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 and be Blessed!
Have a listen and learn more about Tonya Taylor-Dorsey's "Lamb of God," one of the new hymns featured in the collection:
Since 1995, the Women’s Sacred Music Project has been advancing women’s achievements in sacred music:
Discovering a broad range of sacred music by women, much of it unpublished.
Publishing women’s sacred music in Voices Found, Leader's Guide to Voices Found, and Resounding Voices.
Commissioning works by women addressing themes of women in Sacred Scriptures.
Presenting concerts of sacred music by women of various religious traditions.
Educating individuals and communities in the rich resources of women’s sacred music.
50th Anniversary:
The Philadelphia Eleven
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.
Resounding Voices: A Hymn Supplement to Voices Found
Resounding Voices (2023) is a tribute to the 2003 hymnal Voices Found on its twentieth anniversary. The groundbreaking hymnal was the visionary work of The Rt. Rev. Allen Bartlett, Lisa Neufeld Thomas, and the newly formed board of the Women’s Sacred Music Project. The ecumenical and interfaith collection of songs addressed a near absence of liturgical music by women.
In the last twenty years, there has been more music by women in the church, especially choral music; but hymns seem to be the slowest to change. May this rich assortment of sacred song awaken our hearts, enliven our worship, and inspire our understanding of The Holy One.
This project has been made possible through a Vital Worship, Vital Preaching Grant from the Calvin Institute of Christian Worship, Grand Rapids, Michigan, with funds provided by Lilly Endowment, Inc. Additional funding has been provided by the Association of Anglican Musicians, the Standing Commission on Liturgy and Music of the Episcopal Church, The Rt Rev. Terry Allen White, Bishop of Kentucky, and the Mozingo Foundation. We gratefully acknowledge the support of The Hymn Society of the United States and Canada; Hope Publishing Company; and all the publishers who granted use of their copyrighted material. To Rev. Dr. Michael McMahon, Mr. Scott Shorney, and Rev. Dr. Janet Wootton, we owe special thanks for your encouragement and guidance.
Support Our Mission
As a 501(c)3 not-for-profit entity, the WSMP asks for your generosity to support our cause of advancing women's achievements in sacred music. In order to fund comprehensive projects like Resounding Voices, including hymns which are Jewish, Christian, and stretching the boundaries, the WSMP has raised over $20,000 through grants and individual donations. Your continued support of this groundbreaking mission helps us bring many more musical opportunities to women.
New at the Project
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…
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…
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…