This weekend we celebrate black women trailblazers, like Vice President Kamala Harris, at our Lenten Tea. However, a year after her passing, we also remember The Rt. Rev. Barbara Harris. Here is a tribute written by Ayesha Mutope-Johnson of the John D. Epps Chapter of the Union of Black Episcopalians.
Barbara Clementine Harris (1930-2020), the woman who would become the first female bishop in the Episcopal Church – and in the worldwide Anglican Communion –was a towering spirit who always put God first in her life. Born in Germantown, Pennsylvania, she attended church with her mother and siblings at St. Barnabas Episcopal Church, an African American parish (now merged with St. Luke to become a multicultural parish). Barbara loved everything about attending church – the singing, the music, the preaching, the fellowship and Sunday School. She looked forward to attending church, where she sang in the choir, and she enjoyed hearing her mother play the piano. Back at home, she was the preacher, using her memory to repeat the sermon of the day, to the delight and amazement of the whole family.
Barbara took joy and pride in accompanying her mother, Beatrice “Bea” Harris, to church, even while her dad, Walter, proudly claimed himself a “blue moon” attendee (once in a blue moon – at Christmas and Easter). Barbara loved reading the Bible, and would learn passages by heart. When she read something she did not understand, she would write it down, ask for help, and then write it again in words that she could understand.
Barbara never claimed that she received a call to ministry at any particular time. But, even as a young girl, she was committed to church. When she would play Church with her siblings and friends, she would even make sure they had communion. When one of the children protested, “We can’t do it. We have no bread,” Barbara improvised and administered communion in the form of gold fish food. When one of her playmates did not understand her reference to the Tower of Babel, Barbara explained the Bible text, then invited her to attend church with the family. Within a year, 1 that little girl became a member of Barbara’s church, and this was not the last time that little Barbara practiced evangelism by inviting a friend to church. As she grew into young adulthood, even when she and her friends “partied hearty” on Saturday night, she always reminded them to be at church on Sunday morning.
As a child, Barbara was a precocious prodigy, possessed of an excellent memory, an uncanny wisdom, great humility, and good common sense. She made friends well, got along well with others, and showed early leadership prowess. Yet, even then, she did not brook threats or insults, but stood up for herself and for others in the face of injustice. Barbara was an avid reader, a gifted singer and musician and, by her teenage years, a professional writer, turning out a weekly column for the Pittsburgh Courier for which she was paid $3 per week. And, she was resourceful too. When she heard that Paul Robeson would be speaking in her hometown of Philadelphia, she parlayed her press pass into front row seats to hear this giant of the African race speak. She learned from his life to stand up for justice, be loyal to your friends, and expect to pay a price for living into this integrity.
Barbara’s early career after graduation led her to work for Joseph V. Baker Associates, a Black-owned national public relations firm headquartered in Philadelphia. She thrived in this work, representing White companies in the Black community. Within ten years, she had risen to the position of president of the firm, and had gained the respect of her peers, the clients and members of the community. She continued there for 20 years, until 1968, when she took a position at Sun Oil Company, as a public relations officer. By the time she left Sun Oil in 1980 to be ordained a priest, she would become head of the public relations department.
Barbara’s strong Christian values and sense of justice naturally led her to become involved in civil rights and social justice causes. She participated in the Freedom Rides of 1961, and walked 2 part of the way with the 1965 Selma to Montgomery five-day march that led to the passage of the Voting Rights Act. She also spent some of her summer registering voters in Greenville, Mississippi. The trajectory of her entire life was marked by a deep concern for the lost, the least and the left out, as she took up issues of equity and inclusion for Blacks, women, gays, the homeless, the imprisoned and the poverty-stricken.
When Barbara transferred her membership to Church of the Advocate, she found a home for her social justice activism. She said: “I am very passionate about these issues. We must bring about full inclusion of all peoples into the church, eradicate racism, and get rid of sexism. We must use the influence of the church to address some of the issues in our society, issues of economic injustice, equal opportunity, quality education for all people, housing and homelessness”. She also started to do her part in prison ministry. All of this driven by her own experiences since childhood of the many ways in which the society could reject and marginalize people who looked like her. But, prejudice, exclusion, discrimination and oppression did not build any house that Barbara would occupy.
As senior warden on the vestry of the parish she played a leadership role in the forefront of these issues. Thus, it was no surprise, that on July 29, 1974, when the now famous Philadelphia Eleven women were ordained by three retired bishops at Church of the Advocate, in defiance of Episcopal Church dogma, Barbara was the crucifer, front and center, leading the procession. What Barbara did not know is that she was clearing a path for her own entry into priestly ministry, and advancement to becoming the first woman bishop.
In fact, in light of the lava-like advancement of women to the priesthood, Bishop Barbara’s rise was meteoric. As an African American woman, she was not even on the radar for ordination at the time of the controversial ordination of the Philadelphia 11 in 1974, and then the Washington 3 Four in the following year. These were all White women., who were vouchsafed deacon status but denied priestly ordination by the completely male Church leadership.Certainly, no African American woman was even considered at the time. In 1975, Dr. Pauli Murray, Esq. resigned her post on the faculty and administration of Brandeis University to pursue seminary, graduating in 1976, and being the first African American woman ordained a priest in January 1977.
Barbara took an alternative path to clerical ministry. While still heading up the public relations department of Sun Oil Company, she engaged in rigorous theological study – at Villanova University and at a theological unit in Sheffield, England. She also graduated from the Pennsylvania Foundation for Pastoral Counseling. In October 1980, she became the third AfricanAmerican female priest in the Church; and less than ten years later, she was consecrated Bishop Suffragan of Massachusetts, the first woman bishop in the Episcopal Church.
Bishop Barbara’s consecration ceremony on February 11, 1989 at the Hynes Convention Center drew a crowd of 8,000 people, including 1,200 dignitaries, and 62 bishops for the laying on of hands. She was given a security detail and asked to wear a bulletproof vest as a response to obscene messages and death threats she received. She declined to wear the vest, later saying: “I thought that if some person decided to shoot me, what better place to be than at the altar?” Barbara Harris continued, throughout her time in the episcopate, to speak truth boldly, to hone her writing, and to champion justice. She will always be remembered as the woman – an African American – who blazed the trail for women to be consecrated bishops in the worldwide Anglican Communion. Responding about her work as a bishop, she once said: “I certainly don’t want to be one of the boys. I want to offer my peculiar gifts as a black woman … a sensitivity and an awareness that comes out of more than a passing acquaintance with oppression.” On March 13, 2020, Bishop Barbara Harris died peacefully at hospice in Boston, Massachusetts, three months shy of her 90th birthday.
