In October, 1955, fifty plus years ago, the United Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A voted in General Assembly to ordain women to the Ministry of Word and Sacrament. In 1956, the Cayuga-Syracuse Presbytery in New York ordained Margaret Towner, the first women clergyman of the denomination. In 1965, the Hanover Presbytery in Virginia ordained Rachel Henderlite the first woman to be so recognized in the Presbyterian Church in the U.S. These ordinations marked a climax in the history of Presbyterians among whom the role of women in the church had been growing for well over a century. Lois A. Boyd and R. Douglas Brackenridge* told this story in Presbyterian Women in America, Two Centuries of a Quest for Status (1983) published by the Presbyterian Historical Society.  On the fiftieth anniversary of the extension of this ordination right to women it is appropriate to recall the women’s progress in the life of Presbyterians.  

Over the centuries in our male-dominated country, women have been identified and treated in different ways in both society and the church. Early on they were considered mostly “ornamental,” as it was put. But males could not do without females. In those early days, a woman named Mary Wollstonecraft published the explosive A Vindication of the Rights of Women (1772), printed in Philadelphia shortly before Americans had adopted a Declaration of Independence in 1776. A Presbyterian woman (turned Unitarian), Elizabeth Cady Stanton, helped write the “Declaration of Sentiments” (1848) based on 1776 male-oriented document. Stanton published The Woman’s Bible (1895) in which she and other women celebrated the noted females whose contributions may be found throughout the Scriptures.

In August 1920, Presbyterian President Woodrow Wilson signed into existence the XIX Amendment to the Constitution of the United States granting women the right to vote. At the same time women were gaining ground in public matters, they gained ground in ecclesiastical affairs. In the nineteenth century they had started women’s organizations apart from males. Women became deeply involved in the support of and participation in educational endeavors such as Sunday Schools, home and foreign mission work. They formed their own societies to further causes that interested them.

Moreover, because of the “unrest” in the churches, the PCUSA granted the right of women to serve as “brother deacons” (as they were called) in 1922-1923, and “brother elders” in 1930. Ruling elder and mission executive, Robert E. Speer, together with Katherine Bennet and Margaret Hodge, played important roles in this movement in the PCUSA, demonstrating a kind of “de facto” equality in the process. Later on Eugene Caron Blake led the movement in the General Assembly to ordain women as ministers of “Word and Sacrament.”

Enter Margaret E. Towner. Towner, a New Yorker, left a career as medical photographer at the Mayo Clinic to study education at Syracuse University prior to assuming the call of Christian education at the East Genesee (N.Y.) Church. Towner then pursued the three-year Bachelor of Divinity Degree at Union Theological Seminary in New York. She believed such training would be helpful to her in Christian Education. And she flourished as Christian Educator in Allentown, Pa.