The Rev. Elizabeth Habecker

Question: Let’s start back 50 years ago this July. Where were you 50 years ago when the Philadelphia 11 were ordained? Were you aware of it? What was your reaction?

Answer: Let’s see. I was in New Jersey. I was aware, but not very well-informed. I was just aware. I had spent a lot of my life as a layperson doing things in the church. And so, I was either stuffing envelopes, using the Addressograph machine, running a Sunday school for 100 students, things like that, being president of the [parish] ECW [Episcopal Church Women], things like that. And so, I just, sort of, you pick up what things are happening, but didn’t specifically think that it had much necessarily to do with me at that point.

Question: Okay. And where were you in New Jersey?

Answer: St. James, Upper Montclair. [The Rev.] Fred Warnecke was my rector.

Interviewer: Oh, of course!

Answer: You know him. […] It became an itch. Obviously, some of us who had spent so much time providing for the church as one of those women who just [did] whatever needed to be done, altar guild, ECW, rummage sales, running the Sunday school, singing in the choir, da da, da da, da da, da da. Clearly, I felt, hmm.  I just never delved into a vocation in that way.

Somebody came, I don’t even know who it was, from General [Theological Seminary], a woman. And it was a Sunday morning, and she led some of the prayers because we were a Morning Prayer church; once a month we had communion, whether you liked it or not. And I had never seen a woman read anything in the church. As I said at General Convention one time, I’m old enough to have been denied every role in the church except president of the [Episcopal Church] Women. I couldn’t be an acolyte. I couldn’t be, couldn’t read a lesson. So I had really never seen anybody up there in that role. That really sort of was the issue or the time or the event that caused me to get serious about what I was thinking.

[The Rt. Rev. George] Rath was bishop of Newark and he lived in Montclair. At that time I could study to be a deacon, even though other things had happened. And he did not want me to do some kind of local thing. He wanted me to go to seminary. He said, “I want your credentials to stand up anywhere you go, and that’s the best way to do it.” So that got me started in that direction […] fast forward when I was in [General Theological] Seminary. They sent me to Minneapolis [for General Convention] to work the booth so I could be there when the vote was taken for the ordination to the priesthood.

Question: In 1976.

Answer: Yeah, so I was in seminary by then and was in Minneapolis when the vote was taken. My process had been a very, I guess you would say quiet. [The Rev.] Paige Bigelow [who was ordained in January 1977], she was from my diocese, and so I knew her. But there are those that open up the earth and there’s those of us who are willing to come and loosen it up. And then those that come after us do other things. I was always grateful to them for having stuck their necks out like that because there were others of us who had to be the next one, I think. And our necks were stuck out, but not in the same way.

Question: So now you were at seminary at General.

Answer: When the vote was taken. And I was there studying to be a deacon, and I was very devoted to that, and I still am to the serious ministry called the diaconate. I take that very seriously. They mean a lot to me. So, there were a few, a handful of women [there]. Pauli Murray was in seminary then. It was really a privilege to have those people around to interact with and listen to, and they had so much wisdom. So I was so thankful to have happen[ed] to be there when all this was going on. We had planned a service to take place at the seminary, before the vote was taken, because with General you have all parts of the church on one piece of property. For, against, people who walked around in robes and people [who] walk around in shorts. I mean, it was just everybody was there, all different countries. So we planned a service to renew our baptismal vows after the vote was taken. And it was during that service that I believed myself to be called to that priesthood. I always said to people, that’s a calling, not an assumption, because you can, you still need to know that you’re called to do that, not just do it.

Question: And what about that service made you come to that?

Answer: Well, when we were singing the Magnificat, it was really her that gave me permission. I felt if Mary could not know what was going to happen, but trusted that she was indeed called, that that was really my model for that. She was the first one to hold the body of Christ […] I mean the women students were very sort of very privately processing this. We didn’t just have like blow-up balloons and noisemakers. It was anything but. It was a very serious time. And we wanted to be still in community with those who were troubled by that. That was our hope at the time.

And I think we did all right on that, but in terms of my own personal process, I had always said to myself, “If that happens, I still have to know that I am called to do that, because that’s different than being a deacon.” Just because the door flew open doesn’t mean you should rush in there. What are you doing? Do it intentionally and not just because somebody said okay. So, I still feel good about that process. I think we tried to be thoughtful and considerate […] when it happened. So we knew that for sure. That’s how it’s been all along. I mean, that’s how – it’s Linda Grenz that refers to us as the first 100. Most of us have had to carry that kind of role wherever we went because we’re the first ones probably to go there, wherever that is.

Question: Right. And so, you had the sense of call come to you during the service. You were studying, though, to be a deacon.

Answer: Yes.

Question: And what year would you have been in seminary?

Answer: Well, I graduated in, I was ordained in ’77 in Portland, Maine by [Bishop] Frederick Wolf. And I had assumed I would be a priest in the Diocese of Newark, but that didn’t happen. There weren’t any jobs for us [… ] There were only three of us who were coming out into the diocese, and one was a man. He got a job and the two women had to go elsewhere. And I always kind of chuckled about that. And they fancy themselves as such, the most liberal diocese and this and that, except when the push came to shove, we had to go elsewhere.

Question: And is that how you wound up being ordained in Maine?

Answer: Yeah.

Question: Where were you ordained deacon?

Answer: In the cathedral in Newark. Bishop Rath ordained me a deacon.

Question: And then you went up to Maine and did you have a call there?

Answer: Yes. What we [she and her husband, soon-to-be the Rev. John C. Habecker] decided to do was to go […] and make appointments to meet bishops or deployment officers in person. We went to Pennsylvania, New York, Maine, places to make appointments that you could drive to and meet in person with those people.

And so there was this church. They hadn’t had their first vicar. They were new church. They’d had a lot of supply-type people. St. Ann’s in Windham, Maine, and it’s on Lake Sebago, that’s where I got to be. The ordination was at the cathedral on December 16, [1977]. They allowed the congregation to process in first so they could become their church that night. It was kind of the thoughtful thing. The bishop thought that was a way to go, make it their church for the night. And about 800 or 900 people plowed down through the snow and whatever to their church for the night. That was a great place to begin. And they were full of themselves. They were a new church and look at what we’re going to do. And so we did. And they’re still there. They’re still a very busy place and doing great guns all these years later.

Question: That’s great. That’s great. And how were the rest of the clergy in Maine at that time?

Answer:  Yes. Well, there was a fellow rector in St. Peter’s in Portland. He flew his flag upside down. […]  Before the service, they brought a bomb squad in just to make sure everything was okay, but they must’ve been getting phone calls. And then we picked a hymn. This is what you do in the Episcopal Church. You pick a hymn. And when the bishop says, “Is there anyone present who should find a cause not to proceed?” You know, that little line in there. Well, so we picked a hymn to sing in case anybody did want to protest. And the bishop was going to leave with them and go into the side room to listen. And during that time, we would sing this hymn, whatever hymn it was. You always have to be liturgically proper. And we didn’t have to sing a hymn.

Question: What hymn had you chosen?

Answer:  “Oh God, Our Help in Ages Past.” (Laughs.) I don’t know which one. The one they had on the Titanic. (Laughs.) But the dean paced a lot. He was worried about his space and stuff… because nobody had a pattern that could be followed based on other places. Bishop Wolf, he was on the board of trustees at General, and he and I met privately, and he said, “I want you to know if I can’t do this, I am flying the bishop of Vermont here. He’s all ready. You will get ordained.” So I knew when he ordained me, he really had to process that himself. I know he meant it when he did it because he had the bishop of Vermont [the Rt. Rev. Robert Kerr] all set. [He said,] “It’s only fair to tell you that we’re going to do this together, and if I can’t bring myself to do this, I have it all set up for you, so you’ll get ordained.” But he did it.

Question: What did the shape of your ministry take after that? I mean, have you spent all of your ordained working life in parish ministry or … ?

Answer:  I would say mostly. When I moved from Maine back to New Jersey, I was in West Milford, New Jersey. That was about three years. And then I served halftime in Ramsey [at St. John’s Memorial Church] for a while. And then at Christ Church, Ridgewood. You know, a little bit of here, a little bit there. But then I had family in California, so I moved in ‘80, I don’t remember now, let’s think, [eighty] three or four out to the Diocese of Los Angeles. And that’s where I retired from. So […] mostly parish ministry. I went there to Santa Paula, a little town near Ventura, California, and so went from the Diocese of Newark to that congregation.

And when Bishop [Fred] Borsch was the bishop of Los Angeles, I did some work for him. I don’t know what you would call me, chairperson or missioner or whatever for the mission churches. And there were 48 of those in LA. So, I chaired the program group on missions and worked with those congregations for a while. I really did want to work in the area of congregational development. And in the ’70s the Rev. A. Wayne Schwab, [evangelism and renewal officer of the Episcopal Church Center] was the guru for congregational development. And we went to a lot of conferences that he led. [The Rev.] Terry Fullam preached his socks off at some of those. We all were highly motivated into congregational development in this new era, as it was called in the late ’70s and then through the ’80s.

And mostly the women got jobs in congregations that needed to grow because those are the jobs we got. They were either declining or just small churches. Learning as much as you can about congregational development was helpful to that. And I built a brand-new church. I took new church development training, and we built a church where there were five acres of oranges on the eastern part of Diocese of Los Angeles.

Question: Where was that?

Answer:  Well, it [was] at Rancho Cucamonga on the edge of the Mojave Desert where the sprawl was growing, and the new houses were going up.

Question: And how was that diocese about ordained women when you first moved there?

Answer:  Well, I was the tenth woman to show up out there, and right after that year, they had General Convention there [in Anaheim in 1985]. We pooled our money and rented a motel room near where the convention was being held so we could take turns staying there so people could see us, one of us. Maybe one of us would spend a night and spend the next day walking around at the convention in our “outfit” so that people could see women clergy at the convention. It was still necessary to do, we felt, to be visible for people.

But as far as the diocese goes, Bishop [Robert] Rusak had to deal with most of the fallout of the people who were upset. And he ordained Victoria Hatch, who was Nancy Wittig’s sister [Wittig was one of the Philadelphia 11]. He ordained Victoria Hatch as [the] first woman in Diocese of Los Angeles. She moved from Virginia out there.

Question: And you retired out of the Diocese of LA.

Answer:  Yeah, 2013. I was a person who lived in California, but I really never became a Californian, Southern Californian. I wanted to move back east. And so, I have a friend who said, “Well, you’re moving back east.” And she said, “You want to live in Bristol, Rhode Island.” I said, “I do?” She said, “Oh, yeah.” So, I live in Bristol, Rhode Island, now, and I can say that because it’s a really nice place to live. I’m licensed here. And the bishop received me as canonically resident here in the diocese. I get to help out when needed.

Question: Very good. What do you think, looking back on those 50 years since you heard something back in the office at Upper Montclair and to now and all the changes you’ve seen in the church, what do you think the lessons the church is going to bring forward from all of that into the next 50 years?

Answer:  Well, I actually would say the changes I began to notice in the church started when women were allowed to be on the vestry.

That’s where I saw change begin. You began to hear churches looking for leaders with collaborative style, began to be people more interested than the someone-up-front-telling-everybody-what-to-do style. And I think that was the influence that women began to have on the decision making in the church, and once the women were allowed to participate at that level, I suppose some sociologists could say, once that began to happen, there was an inevitability to the rest of it happening, even though we had to push at it. I think the big change came when women were allowed to be delegates, deputies, vestry people.

And what we do is we simply add to that because they were just as challenged in their way, differently, but there was an awkwardness to letting them be seated and all of that. And I remember those days because I was a lay person, and I was more aware that people I knew now were going to be voting at the diocesan convention and stuff like that. And in many congregations, it was a new experience. It was still a new experience for them, even though it’d been some time that it was allowed.

So, I sort of feel like the flow began in that era, and the role the Episcopal Church Women played in the ordination of women, I don’t think many people realize how significantly they were involved in supporting those of us. My first cassock someone at ECW made for me because they couldn’t order one, so they had to make it for me. They did it and they just did it. And then my first set of stoles they made for me and that type thing. So when the people would come to the seminary, the haberdashers of the clergy would come to the seminary, and the women came in, they didn’t know what to do. Mr. Almy sort of went like this (clasps hands to head). [Women asked] “Do you make shirts without pockets on the front?” But Mr. Whipple, he knew what to do when he showed up because they made the shirts to order. […] “No problem, Madam and Dear Reverend.” They knew what to call you.

Question: Can you say a little bit more about ECW support, because some people I know back then wondered where ECW would stand because what would that do to their standing in the church? Because obviously it’s a group of lay women, and what would it do to their standing and position in the church if suddenly there were female priests?

Answer:  Well, I just did a funeral on Saturday, so I hope the line “life has not ended, it’s changed,” applies to the ECW as well as to eternity, right? It has made a difference. [… ] I guess it was Linda Grenz said that 70 percent of the clergy in the Episcopal Church were raised in another church so ECW isn’t something they know about […] But Michael Curry, if ECW said, “we need you,” it didn’t matter whether he is a priest or bishop or the presiding bishop, he showed up because his mother took him to ECW meetings. He grew up in the church. And so that’s different now. We don’t have that kind of assumption about “Who are these people?” So you have to justify yourself more than you used to have to. I do believe in the dioceses where the bishop is enthusiastic about the Episcopal Church Women, they do just great. And in dioceses where they’re basically ignored, they don’t do so good. It’s just going to be like that, and now when you think of the women on whose shoulders we stand, who endowed the ministry of women in the church, what a remarkable story that is right there.

Question: Oh, yeah. Well, I think of a mutual acquaintance of ours, Marge Christie.

Answer:  There you go.

Question: Who knew exactly what she was and wasn’t called to do and spoke up for women’s ordination from the very beginning.

Answer: Christ Church in Ridgewood [New Jersey]. And Dick Shimpfky was the rector then [and later became bishop of the Diocese of El Camino Real]. You couldn’t play it safe, not if you were hanging out with Marge and the rest of her crowd. You go forward not knowing how it was going to be. And I don’t think we can have all that answered. What is the role of the women in the church? And when the women initially raised all the money for the missionaries, that’s what it was then. What is it now? It’s not ‘should we be,’ it’s ‘what is it now?’ Because they always figured it out. During World War II, it’s this and now it’s something else. So what is that else? It’s going to be a continuing conversation.

Question: I think your comment about things began to change when you had women on the vestries and when you had women as deputies; it seems to me that isn’t that true about a lot of the things that have changed in the church? It’s like the pew level, right, pulls the rest of the church forward, pulls the larger infrastructure of the church forward.

Answer: I would have to say it was the women who raised me in the church, and they never taught me anything but to do what I believe God had asked me to do, whatever church I was in. It seemed like that was the expectation that God has called us to do this. If you believe God has called you to do that […], trust it.

But that’s where the women leadership training was really done. So, now what role do the women have? That piece [leadership development and formation] isn’t as demanded as serving is, and so how do we serve is the best thing? And if everything’s going to be co-ed, eh, there were times you want to just be hanging out with the ladies or the men.

See, I think, and I’ve always thought this, that it’s the men of the church that need to be the men of the church. When the men show up, they have a rake in their hands. I mean, they don’t how to be the men of the church, like go on retreat, just the men and just meet together and have breakfast or do that. Women, they just do that, ladies’ night out and whatever we do. When I was working at St. Augustine’s in Santa Monica, [California] and I said to the rector, “If you called a meeting of the men of the church, they’d come.” He said, “Really?” I said, “Yeah.” So, he did, and they did. It scared the pants off him. He just said, “Now what do we?” I said, “They need to be together to be guys in the church.” Everything can’t be co-ed all the time. When are men going to talk about their spiritual journey? Not in front of women.

Question: The only place I ever saw that happen once in a while was in Education for Ministry.

Answer: There you go.

Question: The last group I mentored was about half and half men and women.

Answer: That’s real mature that we can share that spiritual journey. Now we’re getting somewhere. I have [led] a lot of Cursillo weekends, and the Roman [Catholic] Church created Cursillo for men for that very reason because men do not spend any time on their spiritual journey. If there was a way to encourage that, I still think it’s an area that we’re not as energetic about as we should be.

Question: When you thought about talking to me about this and about the last 50 years and your journey, what haven’t I asked you about that you wanted to be sure to say?

Answer: Well, gee whiz. I guess one of the things that everybody seems to have on their mind right now that we haven’t talked about is what is going to happen to the church, basically? How do I see it going forward? Regardless of whether women are ordained and men are ordained […] I think anyone who’s seriously involved in the church is concerned about our future as a church.

I take very seriously the hospitality for children, if you can call it Sunday school or not, you can call it something else, but if you don’t expect them to show up and haven’t provided anything for them, they’re not going to show up. So, I don’t care if it’s a donut, they know you expected them and you have this just for them. They remember that. I worry about not thinking we need to do things like that anymore. Yes, we do. Yes, we do.

A lot of us, our own children don’t go to church and more of us who are clergy,if we sat and talked about that, you’d find a lot of clergy whose grown children don’t go to church. And it’s not because the church abused them in some way, but that their cohorts don’t seem to need it in some way. I have a kind of a range in my own children. Kate, who’s a millennial, lives in Maine, and they don’t go to church. Sarah, who’s 11 years older than Kate so she’s really another generation, lives in Arizona. She doesn’t go to church. So, if I’m speaking at the [ECW] Triennial meeting, and I’d say to those 200 or 300 women, I say, “Raise your hand if you have grandchildren that are not baptized.” They all raise their hand. So, that’s why they’re worried about what’s going to happen. I don’t have an answer, but I do have a question.

I’m very excited about [full] communion, working with the Lutherans and the Methodists. I went to [a] Methodist university and I did my senior paper in seminary on John Wesley. That’s just a family reunion waiting to happen as far as I’m concerned. And I’m very excited about it. Pay attention here folks, because as Phyllis Tickle said, we don’t know, but we do know we’re in a reformation, and we should be excited about that, and it’s going to lead us to that next place. […] It’s going to get challenging enough in all our mainline denominations that we’re going to start really seriously working together, and that’s what we should have done all along anyway, but we all had our things. The little church in Maine that I go to when I go to visit up there, St. Bartholomew, has a Lutheran pastor and she is doing a great job. They love her and she’s doing great. So it’s working. That kind of combination is working probably in a lot of places.

I see that as the future. When I lived in Ohio in the sixties, we were involved in what was called the COCU — Consultation on Church Union. We kept trying to get these churches together. So finally, when you start running out of money, we’re going to start talking to each other. That’ll be okay. Whatever the reason is, that’s fine. So that kind of future for the church is what I’m sort of eager about right now, and I think that’s what’s coming, which is great.

Answer: Great. I think that’s a good place to stop.