Mary Michael Simpson (December 1, 1925 – July 20, 2011) was an American minister. In 1977, she became one of the first women to be ordained a priest by the

American Episcopal Church The Episcopal Church, based in the United States with additional dioceses elsewhere, is a member church of the worldwide Anglican Communion. It is a mainline Protestant denomination and is divided into nine provinces. The presiding bishop of ...

and was the first woman to hold the office of

canon Canon or Canons may refer to: Arts and entertainment * Canon (fiction), the conceptual material accepted as official in a fictional universe by its fan base * Literary canon, an accepted body of works considered as high culture ** Western ca ...

Life and career

Born in

Evansville, Indiana Evansville is a city in, and the county seat of, Vanderburgh County, Indiana, United States. The population was 118,414 at the 2020 census, making it the state's third-most populous city after Indianapolis and Fort Wayne, the largest city in ...

, Simpson grew up in

Texas City, Texas Texas City is a city in Galveston County in the U.S. state of Texas. Located on the southwest shoreline of Galveston Bay, Texas City is a busy deepwater port on Texas's Gulf Coast, as well as a petroleum-refining and petrochemical-manufacturin ...

. She was raised a

Methodist Methodism, also called the Methodist movement, is a group of historically related denominations of Protestant Christianity whose origins, doctrine and practice derive from the life and teachings of John Wesley. George Whitefield and John's ...

but in her senior year of college she became an Episcopalian. She subsequently entered the New York School for Deaconesses and Other Church Workers in New York City from which she graduated in 1949. After graduation she spent six years as a

missionary A missionary is a member of a religious group which is sent into an area in order to promote its faith or provide services to people, such as education, literacy, social justice, health care, and economic development.Thomas Hale 'On Being a Mi ...

to Liberia. Upon her return to the United States, she became a religious sister and took her life vows with the Order of Saint Helena in

Vails Gate, New York Vails Gate is a hamlet (and census-designated place) in Orange County, New York, United States. The population was 3,368 at the 2020 census. It is part of the Poughkeepsie– Newburgh– Middletown, NY Metropolitan Statistical Area as wel ...

in 1956. She was soon after appointed the head of a girls' school operated by the order, Margaret Hall in Versailles, Kentucky, where she remained for about a decade. She then returned to the convent in Vails Gate to become director of novices. -
Updated link
in NY Times archive. In 1973 Simpson became actively involved in the women's movement in the Episcopal Church for the first time after a proposal to allow women priests in the church had been defeated. She had previously not been a vocal advocate for the role of women in the church, although she had privately supported the ordination of women. In 1974 she was appointed a deacon at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in New York City and spent the next three years on the staff of that church working as a pastoral counselor. In 1977, Simpson became one of the first women to be ordained a priest in the

, the first religious sister to be ordained, and the first female

. She was the first ordained woman to preach at

Westminster Abbey Westminster Abbey, formally titled the Collegiate Church of Saint Peter at Westminster, is an historic, mainly Gothic church in the City of Westminster, London, England, just to the west of the Palace of Westminster. It is one of the Unite ...

when she visited London in April 1978. At that time, the

Church of England The Church of England (C of E) is the established Christian church in England and the mother church of the international Anglican Communion. It traces its history to the Christian church recorded as existing in the Roman province of Britai ...

had not approved the ordination of women. Simpson's visit brought together Anglican groups in favor of women's ordination and led to the founding of the Movement for the Ordination of Women.Jenny Daggers, "The Emergence of Feminist Theology in Britain", in ''Time, Utopia, Eschatology. Yearbook of the European Society of Women in Theological Research'' (Peeters, 1999), p. 139. Simpson died in

Augusta, Georgia Augusta ( ), officially Augusta–Richmond County, is a consolidated city-county on the central eastern border of the U.S. state of Georgia. The city lies across the Savannah River from South Carolina at the head of its navigable portion. Georgi ...

in 2011 at the age of 85.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Simpson, Mary 1925 births American Episcopal priests 2011 deaths Women Anglican clergy People from Evansville, Indiana People from Texas City, Texas 20th-century American Episcopalians