Ellen Tillotson(1981-1983): Finding Ourselves In Common Cause

The Rev. Ellen Tillotson '83

By the time I arrived on Chelsea Square in the fall of 1980, the “question” of women’s ordination in the Episcopal Church had been answered, officially. I was standing on the shoulders not only of the Philadelphia Eleven and the Washington Four, but also of the scores of women who had been waiting, preparing, helping the Church to discern its mind and heart about its call to a more robust, inclusive ministry. My class and the classes just ahead and behind were nearly forty percent female. The loneliness of Peggy Muncie and Page Bigelow was not something we shared, though many of us came from Dioceses in which we were a new and singular experience to the hierarchy. It was such a blessed relief to find ourselves in company, different from one another though we were. Mid-career and just out of college, later vocations and those that had lain necessarily dormant while the Church argued over our vocations, we struggled with our variety and yet, over our time at General, found ourselves in common cause.

I had chosen General for three main reasons: as a postulant from the Diocese of North Dakota, I wanted to immerse myself in a wider experience and expression of Anglicanism than the one the twenty-three parishes of that small diocese could provide. Indeed, over my years at General, some of the preeminent figures in worldwide Anglicanism at the time passed through our gates, were invited to preach in the chapel and to reveal the robust witness of this worldwide Church. I chose it, too, because of the visionary leadership of James Fenhagen, who envisioned the Church as a body in which all must play a part, each person’s spirit be rekindled, each one’s gifts honored and allowed to flourish. Finally, in those years, I chose General because of its stance accepting the ordination of women even while that was not the entire focus of its witness. It was neither full-throated in its stance on women’s ordination, nor was it hostile. I thought that was probably going to reflect the church I would be headed into as a priest, a Body providing a mix of affirmation and struggle. Forty-one years later, that still proves true. Oh, and a fourth reason for General: New. York. City. Intoxicating, enervating, indifferent, glorious New York.

Those three years at General remain the richest repository of the sources of my priestly identity; that means, of course, one of the richest sources of my personal experience of myself and my understanding of the world. So, it is impossible to reflect on what those years meant to me in a short reflection. The influence of our common life, the generosity of the faculty in helping to form us as ministers and leaders, the important colleagues and friends whose presence in my life over the years will have to be served with this small sentence. What I finally want to talk about here is the sisterhood I met at General.

At every level of our common life there were women who walked along side each other, witnessing, encouraging, challenging, nurturing the particular charism of women’s leadership and the variety of its expressions. Edson Hall and the top two floors of Eigenbrodt became refuges we could return to each evening and trade stories of what now might be called micro-aggressions but were a common part of the Church leaning into the implications of accepting women in formerly forbidden positions of leadership. Some of those friendships sustain me deeply to this very day. There were the married women students with whom we worked and talked at meals and around classes, working in the student Co-op program, in the library. There were talented and committed spouses who brought their energy and insights to the Christian walk. All these, our peers, helped to foment a deep conversation about what it meant to lead as women, as feminists (well, some of us), as followers of Jesus in our respective arenas. It helped us push at the easy clericalism of the church in those years, to push away at the notion that the privilege of the hegemony was all that faithful.

Then there were the women just in the generation ahead of us: women in curacies in and around New York, sometimes preaching in the Chapel, pursuing S.T.M. degrees, just walking around and wearing collars and engaging us in conversation. (Occasionally, for a weekday Eucharist, we might see one of them at the altar, but never as Celebrant at one of the two weekly Community Eucharists. That position was reserved only for faculty, and no ordained woman was among that body.) There was the indefatigable Barbara Crafton (my field education supervisor!) and the inexhaustible Minka Shura Sprague, dancing and thinking and daring us to go deeper, further. There were other women who appeared on the Close, engaging us in conversation, kindling our imaginations of a more whole Church emerging. I met the Rev. Pauli Murray by chance in the lobby one day.

Finally, there were three women members of the faculty: Dr. Barbara Hall, Dr. Fredrica Thompsett (adjunct) and, eventually, the Rev. Dr. Patricia Wilson-Kastner. Barbara pushed us to open up the New Testament, to de-sentimentalize our notions of how it carried its truths, to hear the first-century voices more clearly, and to find congruence with our own faith honestly. Her presence was also a refuge not only for us as women, but for those still so vulnerable in the Church’s slowly emerging understanding of human sexuality. Fredrica, while serving as the Director of the Board for Theological Education, lived on the Close and taught occasionally. Her seminar on Feminist Methodology gathered M.Div. students, Th.D. candidates and S.T.M. students in a rich exploration of how we might deepen the Church’s scholarship. Pat Wilson-Kastner arrived for my senior year, to teach preaching. As the first ordained woman on the faculty, she finally took her place at the altar, ending a long formational and emotional drought for us all.

There is so much more to tell, so many stories, so much struggle, so much gratitude and tears and laughter. What stories do you have to tell? How have they shaped the disciple and leader you are, I wonder?