Cinema Night: The Philadelphia Eleven

Cinema Night: The Philadelphia Eleven
February 22, 2024 @ 6:00 p.m. in the Chapel

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In 1974, a group of women and their supporters organized their ordination as Episcopal priests in an act of civil disobedience, and challenged the very essence of patriarchy within Christendom. This documentary film tells their story.

The ordinations of the Philadelphia Eleven opened the way for fifty-years of living more fully into equity across the gender spectrum in an historically patriarchal institution. While there is still much work to do to dismantle oppression in all its forms, the Episcopal Church has inarguably been changed because of what happened on July 29, 1974 at the Church of the Advocate.

“To me this is a story about how to break down barriers with grace, and be true to oneself in the process. And it is a story about standing up to institutions that do not allow all people to be who they are called to be.” – Director Margo Guernsey

“The church is already split in half. That’s why we’re doing it.” – Bishop Barbara Harris

In 1978 poet Alla Bozarth – one of women ordained as a priest in Philadelphia in 1974 – wrote this poem entitled “Call.”

Call

There is a new sound

of roaring voices

in the deep

and light-shattered

rushes in the heavens.

The mountains are coming alive,

the fire-kindled mountains,

moving again to reshape the earth.

It is we sleeping women,

waking up in a darkened world,

cutting the chains from off our bodies

with our teeth, stretching our lives

over the slow earth—

Seeing, moving, breathing in

the vigor that commands us

to make all things new.

It has been said that while the women sleep,

the earth shall sleep—

But listen! We are waking up and rising,

and soon our sisters will know their strength.

The earth-moving day is here.

We women wake to move in fire.

The earth shall be remade.

From Womanpriest by Alla Renée Bozarth, Paulist Press 1978,

revised edition Luramedia 1988, distributed by the poet.

Distributed by Alla Renée Bozarth at Wisdom House, Sandy, Oregon.