Women’s History Month: 7 Christian denominations that voted to allow female ordination

By Michael Gryboski, Mainline Church Editor Twitter

Presbyterian Church in the USA – 1956

The Rev. Eunice Poethig (left) with the Rev. Margaret Ellen Towner (right), at the “Tending the Flame” conference in 2005. Towner was the first woman to be ordained in the Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A., later called Presbyterian Church (USA).
The Rev. Eunice Poethig (left) with the Rev. Margaret Ellen Towner (right), at the “Tending the Flame” conference in 2005. Towner was the first woman to be ordained in the Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A., later called Presbyterian Church (USA). | Courtesy of Presbyterian Historical Society

The Presbyterian Church in the USA, the predecessor of the Presbyterian Church (USA), ordained their first female clergyperson the same year as the Methodist Church’s vote.

In 1956, Margaret Towner became the first female pastor at a ceremony held at The First Presbyterian Church Syracuse in New York, being called to ministry at First Presbyterian Church of Allentown, Pennsylvania.

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“I received letters from ministers’ wives who worried that women would take jobs away from their husbands and that women would be willing to be paid less,” recalled Towner in an interview with The Presbyterian Outlook.

“I didn’t answer those letters or get into a dialogue with others about their opinions … I felt that an example of women in ministry would help break down barriers rather than debate. That seemed to work.”

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