At first, it’s hard to imagine Nancy Wittig in the throes of controversy. When she’s not presiding over the services at St. Andrew’s in the Field Episcopal Church in the northeast section of Philadelphia, Rev. Wittig tends to dress conservatively, her clerical collar always in place.
But as she begins to speak, tracing her spiritual journey, the passion of her convictions becomes almost palpable.
“It’s hard to go back and remember what mindsets were 25 years ago, but in essence we were looked upon as disobedient radicals,” she said. “It used to be said, in 1974, well this is just a bunch of radical, gay women libbers who are just out there to upset the applecart.”
Wittig was remembering a day more than 20 years ago when she and 10 other women stunned the church by becoming the first Episcopal priests in the worldwide Anglican community during an ordination ceremony at the Episcopal Church of the Advocate in Philadelphia.
“Of course, on some level, none of us was radical at all,” she said. “We were all white women . . . upper middle class, highly educated, and we were privileged.”
Wittig’s journey to the priesthood was relatively straightforward. Because her father was in the U.S. Navy, her family moved around the world. As a child, she attended the Anglican churches in different countries.
“Three things were instrumental in shaping my spiritual development,” she explained. “First was the civil rights movement in America and the indignation I felt over that. Second, in traveling around the world, I began to realize that nationalism wasn’t as important as the church universal. Thirdly, I was impacted by the Vietnam War. I felt a sense of social responsibility and a need to participate, which, of course, is a very biblical thing.”
Wittig also had a desire to “know what the 75-cent words meant, words like resurrection and redemption.”
After graduating from the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill, Wittig enrolled in the Virginia Theological Seminary. While at the seminary, she got married. Her husband, Richard Wittig, was studying for the Methodist ministry at the time. By the mid-1970s, women were being accepted as Methodist ministers, but Wittig stayed with her roots. “Being a Methodist, minister or not, just wasn’t what I was about,” she said.
At the seminary, Wittig met other women students, as well as women who had been previously ordained as Episcopal deacons.
“As we began to talk,” she said, “there was this uncanny sense that the Holy Spirit was working in the midst of us.”
A year after her 1972 graduation, Wittig was ordained as a deacon, and shortly after that, she and the 10 others were ordained as priests.
“Ours was an irregular ordination, but it changed the way we in the church looked at things forever. Once there were women who were priests, we could not go back to a time before that happened.”
For a few years after that historic Philadelphia ordination, Wittig admitted, things were difficult for her, but she said she never doubted the rightness of her actions.
“I believe it was all prophetic in a biblical sense,” she said. “There was no doubt in my mind or in my heart that this was something much bigger than 11 women, or 1,100 women or 11,000 women.”
There are currently 10 women bishops in the worldwide Anglican community, and more than 2,000 women serve as Episcopal priests nationwide.
But from 1974 to 1976 (when the church formally voted in favor of the ordination of women), Wittig said, she “was not welcomed in most churches . . . and if they did let me in, it was just to preach, not to consecrate,” that is, to serve communion. Finally, in late 1977, Wittig began to get calls to work extensively as a minister “at large” in various New Jersey congregations. Then, in the fall of 1982, she was given her own church, St. John the Divine, a small, struggling parish in Hasbrouck Heights, N.J. She stayed there until 1988, when she was asked to take over as pastor for St. Andrews, a small congregation of about 100 members in a working-class section of suburban Philadelphia.
Personally, Wittig’s life has changed dramatically since that 1974 ordination. She had two children, a daughter, Alexandra, now 22, and a son, Wesley, 19. In 1986, she and Richard divorced, and with her daughter away from home, she and Wesley now live together in a parsonage near the church.
Though Wittig said her church is in a fairly conservative section of the city, there hasn’t been any controversy surrounding her appointment.
“I think they were looking for someone who would come, be in their midst . . . someone who would love them and help them be faithful people.”
Wittig now has little time to debate the larger theological questions that so fascinated her in college.
“My energy goes toward reconciling the institutional church with the Gospel,” she said. “I feel there’s a tremendous hunger for spirituality; the difficulty is in trying to get the institution of the church to be responsive to what people need–what they are saying and the questions they are asking. Somehow the church hasn’t found a way to be responsive to people’s lives. It needs to be dealing with issues of housing and medical care, food and economic justice for everyone. The working poor are all around us. The fact of the matter is there are a lot of folks who aren’t even working . . . people aren’t covered for medical expenses or in between jobs. I feel every person in this country should have medical insurance and housing. As a Christian, I feel there’s no excuse for things being the way they are.”
St. Andrews parish has child care, which is geared, Wittig said, “very much to working-class folks, some single parents and some on assistance.”
Last summer the parish had a program for children and it is hoping to start an after-school program in 1998. In addition, Wittig works with other area churches to run a food bank.
“We’re working together to feed those who need it, and we’re trying to keep people in shelter.”
Wittig admitted progress has been slow.
“It all takes a while. People get discouraged and don’t feel they can make a difference. It might only seem like a little bit, but if everyone does a little, it can add up to a lot.”
One of the primary responsibilities of church leaders, secular or clergy, Wittig believes, is to “keep a fire in their bellies and the Gospel in their hearts.”
Just in case there’s any question about the traditional aspects of her faith, Wittig summarized her beliefs: “To love God, neighbor and self. That’s basically the Swiss army knife of life. If you’ve got that, you’re going to make it. If you’ve got that, you’re going to be all right.”
