Carter Heyward
[The Episcopal News] A highlight of this year’s Diocesan Convention, meeting Nov. 8 – 9 at the Riverside Convention Center, will be an address by the Rev. Carter Heyward, a priest, professor, theologian, activist, writer, and one of the Philadelphia 11, the first women ordained as priests in The Episcopal Church.
Heyward’s address is scheduled for approximately 1:30 p.m. (after the lunch break) on Saturday, Nov. 9. The diocesan community is invited and encouraged to attend. Visitors will be seated in a gallery off the convention floor. The address, along with other convention business, will be live-streamed on the diocese’s Facebook page and YouTube channel.
Heyward, 89, is featured in the documentary The Philadelphia 11, which will be screened at 7:30 p.m. on Friday, Nov. 8, following the convention dinner at the Riverside Convention Center. All are invited to the screening, which will be held at no charge.
Heyward became a professor at Episcopal Divinity School in Cambridge, Massachusetts (now EDS at Union in New York), in 1976, soon after her ordination, which at first was condemned by the House of Bishops, but later regularized after the 1976 meeting of General Convention authorized the ordination of women into the priesthood.
She brought to her work at EDS an impressive academic resume, including an undergraduate degree from Randolph-Macon Women’s College in Lynchburg, Virginia; a master’s degree in the comparative study of religion from Columbia University, and a master’s degree from Union Theological Seminary. In 1980 she earned a doctorate in systematic theology from Union.
From high school on, Heyward was an activist for racial integration, working with other teens for the integration of the summer camp in the Diocese of North Carolina, where she spent her adolescence. In seminary she became a feminist, working for passage of the Equal Rights Amendment as well as the ordination of women in The Episcopal Church. She was an early proponent of gay and lesbian rights. According to her website, “The key for her, as both theologian and lesbian, was in realizing the fundamental theological, political, historical, and psychological connections between gender and sexual oppressions and justice movements.”
As a professor she her primary teaching concentrated on 19th century Anglican theology, feminist liberation theology and theology of sexuality. “She transformed consciousness, proclaimed the possibilities for women to be priests, for lesbians to be theological, and made way for new approaches to connecting the divine to the erotic, justice, and activism,” according to her website biography.
Heyward is the author or editor of 14 books, including her latest, The Seven Deadly Sins. In retirement she works with a local chapter of the NAACP and remains active in other organizations. She founded and is still on the board for the Free Rein Center for Therapeutic Riding and Education, Inc., in Bernard, North Carolina. According to the organization’s website, “At one time or another, Carter has worked at Free Rein as volunteer, instructor, horse-trainer, stall-mucker, fund-raiser, board chair and executive director.” For 10 years Heyward also was a fiddler in the music group Bold Gray Mares.
Heyward also will preside at the convention Eucharist, to be held at 8:30 a.m. on Saturday, Nov. 9 at the Riverside Convention Center, located at 3637 5th Street, Riverside 92501-2816. According to the Rev. Canon Susan Russell of the liturgy planning team, “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 Rev. Norma Guerra [associate for formation and transitions ministry at the diocese] 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.”
More about Diocesan Convention is here.