Church of the Advocate: Where Women Became Priests

The Church of the Advocate, a Gothic Revival landmark built between eighteen eighty-seven and eighteen ninety-seven, stands as one of the most significant sites in both African American and women's religious history in the United States.

In nineteen seventy-four, the first eleven women to be ordained as Episcopal priests received their orders here, in a ceremony that defied official church policy at the time. The so-called Philadelphia Eleven sparked a crisis in the Episcopal Church that ultimately led to formal approval of women's ordination in nineteen seventy-six. The church had also served a growing African American community since the nineteen thirties, and hosted major Black Power conferences in the nineteen sixties and seventies, making it a crossroads of two of the defining movements of its era. It is a National Historic Landmark.