Timeline of women's ordination

This is a timeline of women's ordination.

• 6th century BCE: Mahapajapati Gotami, the aunt and foster mother of Buddha, was the first woman to receive Buddhist ordination as a nun.^[1]
• 1647-1651: Elizabeth Hooton met and was inspired by George Fox in 1647. By 1651, she was preaching and was imprisoned as a result.
• 1652: Mary Fisher became a Quaker "Publisher of Truth" and was imprisoned for publicly rebuking the vicar of Selby Church in front of his congregation.
• before 1656: In 1656, Mary Howgill wrote a letter rebuking Oliver Cromwell for his persecution of the Quakers. After delivering it to him personally, they had a long discussion, but she was subsequently imprisoned for her action.
• 1815: Clarissa Danforth was ordained in New England. She was the first woman ordained in the Free Will Baptist faith, possibly by John Colby. The power to ordain a minister is reserved to individual churches in the Free Will Baptist denomination, so there was no policy for or against ordination of women.^[2]
• 1853: Antoinette Brown Blackwell was ordained as a minister in the Congregational Church.^[3] The Congregational Church, like the Free Will Baptist Church, leaves decisions on ordination to individual churches. She was ordained on September 15, 1853, and the radical minister Luther Lee gave a sermon entitled "Women's Right to Preach the Gospel".^[4][5][6] She was dismissed in July 1854, apparently by her own request because of lack of support from the women in the church. She later became a Unitarian and was ordained as a Unitarian minister in 1863.^[7] The Congregationalists later merged with others to create the United Church of Christ, which ordains women.^[7][8]
• 1861: Mary A. Will was the first woman ordained in the Wesleyan Methodist Connection by the Illinois Conference in the United States. The Wesleyan Methodist Connection eventually became the Wesleyan Church.
• 1863: Olympia Brown was ordained by the Universalist denomination in 1863, the first woman ordained by that denomination, in spite of a last-moment case of cold feet by her seminary which feared adverse publicity.^[9] After a decade and a half of service as a full-time minister, she became a part-time minister in order to devote more time to the fight for women's rights and universal suffrage.^[7] In 1961, the Universalists and Unitarians joined to form the Unitarian Universalist Association (UUA).^[10] The UUA became the first large denomination to have a majority of female ministers.^[7]
• 1866: Helenor M. Davison was ordained as a deacon by the North Indiana Conference of the Methodist Protestant Church, probably making her the first ordained woman in the Methodist tradition.
• 1880: Anna Howard Shaw was the first woman ordained in the Methodist Protestant Church, an American church which later merged with other denominations to form the United Methodist Church.^[11]
• 1888: Fidelia Gillette may have been the first ordained woman in Canada.^[7] She served the Universalist congregation in Bloomfield, Ontario, during 1888 and 1889.^[7] She was presumably ordained in 1888 or earlier.^[7]
• 1889: The Nolin Presbytery of the Cumberland Presbyterian Church ordained Louisa Woosley as the first female minister of the Cumberland Presbyterian Church, USA.^[12]
• 1889: Ella Niswonger was the first woman ordained in the American United Brethren Church, which later merged with other denominations to form the American United Methodist Church, which has ordained women with full clergy rights and conference membership since 1956.^[13]
• 1892: Anna Hanscombe is believed to be the first woman ordained by the parent bodies which formed the Church of the Nazarene in 1919.^[7]
• 1894: Julia A. J. Foote was the first woman to be ordained as a deacon by the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church.
• 1909: The Church of God (Cleveland, Tennessee) began ordaining women in 1909.^[7]
• 1911: Ann Allebach was the first Mennonite woman to be ordained. This occurred at the First Mennonite Church of Philadelphia.^[7]
• 1911: St. Joan's International Alliance, founded in 1911, was the first Catholic group to work for women being ordained as priests.^[14][15]
• 1912: Olive Winchester, born in America, became the first woman ordained by any trinitarian Christian denomination in the United Kingdom when she was ordained by the Church of the Nazarene.^[16][17]
• 1914: The Assemblies of God was founded and ordained its first woman pastors in 1914.^[7]
• 1917: The Congregationalist Church (England and Wales) ordained their first woman, Constance Coltman (née Todd), at the King's Weigh House, London.^[18] Its successor is the United Reformed Church.^[7][19] (a union of the Congregational Church in England and Wales and the Presbyterian Church of England in 1972). Since then two more denominations have joined the union: The Reformed Churches of Christ (1982) and the Congregational Church of Scotland (2000). All of these denominations ordained women at the time of Union and continue to do so.
• 1920s: Some Baptist denominations started ordaining women.^[7]
• 1922: The Jewish Reform movement's Central Conference of American Rabbis stated that "...woman cannot justly be denied the privilege of ordination."^[20] However, the first woman in Reform Judaism to be ordained (Sally Priesand) was not ordained until 1972.
• 1927: Winifred Kiek was the first woman ordained to Christian Ministry in Australia. She was ordained in the Congregational Union of Australia, now the Uniting Church in Australia.^[21]
• 1928: A secular law was passed in Thailand banning women's full ordination in Buddhism. However, this law was revoked some time after Varanggana Vanavichayen became the first female monk to be ordained in Thailand in 2002.^[22]
• 1929: Maria Izabela Wiłucka-Kowalska was the first woman to be ordained by the Old Catholic Mariavite Church in Poland.^{[23][lower-alpha 1]}
• 1930: A predecessor church of the Presbyterian Church (USA) ordained its first female as an elder.^[7]
• 1935: Regina Jonas was ordained privately by a German rabbi and became the world's first female rabbi.
• 1936: Rev Lydia Emelie Gruchy was the first women to be ordained by the United Church of Canada.
• 1944: Florence Li Tim-Oi became the first woman to be ordained as an Anglican priest. She was born in Hong Kong, and was ordained in Guandong province in unoccupied China on January 25, 1944, on account of a severe shortage of priests due to World War II. When the war ended, she was forced to relinquish her priesthood, yet she was reinstated as a priest later in 1971 in Hong Kong. "When Hong Kong ordained two further women priests in 1971 (Joyce M. Bennett and Jane Hwang), Florence Li Tim-Oi was officially recognised as a priest by the diocese."^[24] She later moved to Toronto, Canada, and assisted as a priest there from 1983 onwards.
• 1947: The Lutheran Protestant Church started to ordain women as priests.^[25]
• 1947: The Czechoslovak Hussite Church started to ordain women.^[7]
• 1948: The Evangelical Lutheran Church of Denmark started to ordain women.^[7]
• 1949: The Old Catholic Church (in the U.S.) started to ordain women.^[7]
• 1956: The Presbyterian Church (USA) ordained its first female minister, Margaret Towner.^[26]
• 1957: In 1957 the Unity Synod of the Moravian Church declared of women's ordination "in principle such ordination is permissible" and that each province is at liberty to "take such steps as seem essential for the maintenance of the ministry of the Word and Sacraments;” however, while this was approved by the Unity Synod in 1957, the Northern Province of the Moravian Church did not approve women for ordination until 1970 at the Provincial Synod, and it was not until 1975 that the Revd Mary Matz became the first female minister within the Moravian Church.^[27]
• 1958: Women ministers in the Church of the Brethren were given full ordination with the same status as men.^[28]
• 1958: The Church of Sweden became the first Lutheran church to ordain female pastors in 1958.
• 1959: The Reverend Gusta A. Robinette, a missionary, was ordained in the Sumatra (Indonesia) Conference soon after The Methodist Church granted full clergy rights to women in 1956. She was appointed District Superintendent of the Medan Chinese District in Indonesia becoming the first female district superintendent in the Methodist Church.
• 1960: The Evangelical Lutheran Church of Sweden started ordaining women.^[7]
• 1964: Addie Davis became the first Southern Baptist woman to be ordained.^[29] However, the Southern Baptist Convention stopped ordaining women in 2000, although existing female pastors are allowed to continue their jobs.^[7]
• 1965: Rachel Henderlite became the first woman ordained in the Presbyterian Church in the United States; she was ordained by the Hanover Presbytery in Virginia.^[30][31]
• 1967: The Presbyterian Church in Canada started ordaining women.^[28]
• 1969: The Methodist Church of Australasia ordained Margaret Sanders, and 3 days later, ordained Coralie Ling as the first female Methodist ministers in Australia.^[32]
• 1970: The Northern Province of the Moravian Church approved women for ordination in 1970 at the Provincial Synod, but it was not until 1975 that the Revd Mary Matz became the first female minister within the Moravian Church.^[27]
• 1970: On November 22, 1970, Elizabeth Alvina Platz became the first woman ordained by the Lutheran Church in America, and as such was the first woman ordained by any Lutheran denomination in America.^[33] The first woman ordained by the American Lutheran Church, Barbara Andrews, was ordained in December 1970.^[34] On January 1, 1988 the Lutheran Church in America, the American Lutheran Church, and the Association of Evangelical Lutheran Churches merged to form the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, which continues to ordain women.^[35] (The first woman ordained by the Association of Evangelical Lutheran Churches, Janith Otte, was ordained in 1977.^[36])
• 1971: Venerable Voramai, also called Ta Tao Fa Tzu, became the first fully ordained Thai woman in the Mahayana lineage in Taiwan and turned her family home into a monastery.
• 1971: Joyce M. Bennett and Jane Hwang were the first regularly ordained priests in the Anglican Church in Hong Kong.^[7]
• 1972: Freda Smith became the first female minister to be ordained by the Metropolitan Community Church.^[37]
• 1972: Sally Priesand became the first female rabbi to be ordained in Reform Judaism, and also the first female rabbi in the world to be ordained by any theological seminary.
• 1973: Emma Sommers Richards became the first Mennonite woman to be ordained as a pastor of a Mennonite congregation (Lombard Mennonite Church in Illinois).^[38]
• 1974: The Methodist Church of Great Britain started to ordain women again (after a lapse of ordinations).^[39]
• 1974: Sandy Eisenberg Sasso became the first female rabbi to be ordained in Reconstructionist Judaism.^[40]
• 1974: The Philadelphia Eleven are ordained into the Priesthood of the Episcopal Church of the U.S.A.^[41]
• 1975: The Evangelical Lutheran Church of Latvia decided to ordain women as pastors, although since 1993, under the leadership of Archbishop Janis Vanags, it no longer does so.
• 1975: Dorothea W. Harvey became the first woman to be ordained by the Swedenborgian Church.^[42]
• 1975: Barbara Ostfeld-Horowitz became the first female cantor ordained in Reform Judaism.
• 1975: In 1975, the Revd Mary Matz became the first female minister ordained in the Moravian Church.^[27]
• 1975: Jackie Tabick, born in Dublin, became the first female rabbi ordained in England.^[43]
• 1976: The Anglican Church in Canada ordained six female priests.
• 1976: The Revd Pamela McGee was the first female ordained to the Lutheran ministry in Canada.^[7]
• 1976: Venerable Karuna Dharma became the first fully ordained female member of the Buddhist monastic community in the U.S.^[44]
• 1977: The Anglican Church in New Zealand ordained five female priests.^[7]
• 1977: Pauli Murray became the first African American woman to be ordained as an Episcopal priest in 1977.^[45]
• 1977: The first woman ordained by the Association of Evangelical Lutheran Churches, Janith Otte, was ordained in 1977.^[36]
• 1977: On January 1, 1977, Jacqueline Means became the first woman ordained to the priesthood in the Episcopal Church.^[46] 11 women were "irregularly" ordained to the priesthood in Philadelphia on July 29, 1974, before church laws were changed to permit women's ordination.^[41] They are often called the "Philadelphia 11". Church laws were changed on September 16, 1976.^[41]
• 1978: Mindy Jacobsen became the first blind woman to be ordained as a cantor in the history of Judaism.^[47]
• 1978: Lauma Lagzdins Zusevics was ordained as the first woman to serve as a full-time minister for the Latvian Evangelical Lutheran Church in America.^[48]
• 1979: The Reformed Church in America started ordaining women as ministers.^[49]
• 1981: Lynn Gottlieb became the first female rabbi to be ordained in the Jewish Renewal movement.
• 1981: Ani Pema Chodron is an American woman who was ordained as a bhikkhuni (a fully ordained Buddhist nun) in a lineage of Tibetan Buddhism in 1981. Pema Chödrön was the first American woman to be ordained as a Buddhist nun in the Tibetan Buddhist tradition.
• 1982: Nyambura J. Njoroge became the first female ordained minister in the Presbyterian Church of East Africa.^[50]
• 1983: An Anglican woman was ordained in Kenya.^[7]
• 1983: Three Anglican women were ordained in Uganda.^[7]
• 1984: The Community of Christ (known at the time as the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints) authorized the ordination of women.^[7] They are the second largest Latter Day Saint denomination.^[7] A schism brought on by this change and others led to the formation of the Restoration Branches movement, the Restoration Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints and the Remnant Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints all of which reject female priesthood, although not always the ordination of women in all contexts.
• 1985: The first women deacons were ordained by the Scottish Episcopal Church.^[7]
• 1987: Erica Lippitz and Marla Rosenfeld Barugel became the first female cantors ordained in Conservative Judaism.
• 1987: The first female deacons were ordained in the Church of England.^[51]
• 1988: The Evangelical Lutheran Church of Finland started to ordain women.^[7]
• 1988: Virginia Nagel was ordained as the first Deaf female priest in the Episcopal Church.^[52]
• 1989: Einat Ramon, ordained in New York, became the first female native-Israeli rabbi.^[53]
• 1990: Anglican women were ordained in Ireland.^[7] Janet Catterall became the first woman ordained an Anglican priest in Ireland.^[54]
• 1991: The Presbyterian Church of Australia ceased ordaining women to the ministry in 1991, but the rights of women ordained prior to this time were not affected.
• 1992: Naamah Kelman, born in the United States, became the first female rabbi ordained in Israel.^[55][56]
• 1992: The Anglican Church of South Africa started to ordain women.^[7]
• 1993: Rebecca Dubowe became the first Deaf woman to be ordained as a rabbi in the United States.^[57]
• 1993: The Communauté Evangélique Mennonite au Congo (Mennonite Evangelical Community of Congo) voted to ordain women as pastors.^[58]
• 1993: Valerie Stessin became the first female Conservative rabbi to be ordained in Israel.^[53]
• 1993: Leslie Friedlander became the first female cantor ordained by the Academy for Jewish Religion (New York).^[59][60]
• 1994: Lia Bass was ordained by the Jewish Theological Seminary in New York, thus becoming the first Latin-American female rabbi in the world as well as the first woman from Brazil to be ordained as a rabbi.^{[61][62][63][64]}
• 1994: The first women priests were ordained by the Scottish Episcopal Church.^[7]
• 1994: Indrani Rampersad was ordained as the first female Hindu priest in Trinidad.^[65]
• 1994: On March 12, 1994, the Church of England ordained 32 women as its first female priests.^[66]
• 1995: The Sligo Seventh-day Adventist Church in Takoma Park, Maryland, ordained three women in violation of the denomination's rules - Kendra Haloviak, Norma Osborn, and Penny Shell.^[67]
• 1995: The Evangelical Lutheran Church in Denmark ordained its first woman as a bishop.^[68]
• 1995: In May 1995, Bola Odeleke was the first woman ordained as a bishop in Africa. Specifically, she was ordained in Nigeria.^[69]
• 1996: Through the efforts of Sakyadhita, an International Buddhist Women Association, ten Sri Lankan women were ordained as bhikkhunis in Sarnath, India.^[70]
• 1998: The General Assembly of the Nippon Sei Ko Kai (Anglican Church in Japan) started to ordain women.^[7]
• 1998: The Guatemalan Presbyterian Synod started to ordain women.^[7]
• 1998: The Old Catholic Church in the Netherlands started to ordain women.^[7]
• 1998: After 900 years without such ordinations, Sri Lanka again began to ordain women as fully ordained Buddhist nuns, called bhikkhunis.
• 1999: Beth Lockard was ordained as the first Deaf pastor in the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America.^[71][72]
• 1999: Tamara Kolton became the first rabbi of either sex (and therefore, because she was female, the first female rabbi) to be ordained in Humanistic Judaism.
• 1999: Angela Warnick Buchdahl, born in Seoul, Korea,^[73] became the first Asian-American person to be ordained as a cantor in the world when she was ordained by HUC-JIR, an American seminary for Reform Judaism.^[74]
• 2000: The Baptist Union of Scotland voted to allow their individual churches to make local decisions as to whether to allow or prohibit the ordination of women.^[7]
• 2000: The Mennonite Brethren Church of Congo ordained its first female pastor in 2000.^[75]
• 2000: Helga Newmark, born in Germany, became the first female Holocaust survivor ordained as a rabbi. She was ordained in America.^[76][77]
• 2000: The Lutheran Evangelical Protestant Church (GCEPC) has ordained women since its inception in the year 2000.
• 2000: The Mombasa diocese of the Anglican Church in Kenya began to ordain women.^[7]
• 2000: The Church of Pakistan ordained its first female deacons.^[7] It is a united church which dates back to the 1970 local merger of Anglicans, Methodists, Presbyterians, Lutherans and other Protestant denominations.^[7]
• 2001: Angela Warnick Buchdahl, born in Seoul, Korea,^[73] became the first Asian-American person to be ordained as a rabbi in the world; she was ordained by HUC-JIR, an American seminary for Reform Judaism.^[74]
• 2001: Deborah Davis became the first cantor of either sex (and therefore, since she was female, the first female cantor) ordained in Humanistic Judaism; however, Humanistic Judaism has since stopped graduating cantors.
• 2002: Sharon Hordes became the very first cantor ordained in Reconstructionist Judaism. Therefore, since she was a woman, she became their first female cantor.
• 2002: Avitall Gerstetter became the first female cantor in Jewish Renewal and the first female cantor in Germany.^[78][79]
• 2002: The Danube Seven (Christine Mayr-Lumetzberger, Adelinde Theresia Roitinger, Gisela Forster, Iris Muller, Ida Raming, Pia Brunner and Angela White), a group of seven women from Germany, Austria, and the United States, were ordained on a ship on the Danube on 29 June 2002 by Rómulo Antonio Braschi, an Independent Catholic bishop whose own episcopal ordination was considered 'valid but illicit' by the Roman Catholic Church. The women's ordinations were not, however, recognised as being valid by the Roman Catholic Church. As a consequence of this violation of canon law and their refusal to repent, the women were excommunicated in 2003.^[80][81] Since then several similar actions have been held by Roman Catholic Womenpriests, a group in favor of women's ordination in Roman Catholicism; this was the first such action.^[82]
• 2002: Khenmo Drolma, an American woman, became the first Bhikkhuni (fully ordained Buddhist nun) in the Drikung Kagyu lineage of Buddhism, traveling to Taiwan to be ordained.
• 2002: A 55-year-old Buddhist nun, Varanggana Vanavichayen, became the first female monk to be ordained in Thailand. She was ordained by a Sri Lankan woman monk in the presence of a male Thai monk. Theravada scriptures, as interpreted in Thailand, require that for a woman to be ordained as a monk, the ceremony must be attended by both a male and female monk.^[83] Some time after this a secular law passed in Thailand in 1928 banning women's full ordination in Buddhism was revoked.
• 2003: Ayya Sudhamma became the first American-born woman to receive bhikkhuni ordination in Sri Lanka.
• 2003: On February 28, 2003, Dhammananda Bhikkhuni, formerly known as Chatsumarn Kabilsingh, became the first Thai woman to receive full ordination as a Theravada nun. She was ordained in Sri Lanka.
• 2003: Sivan Malkin Maas became the first Israeli to be ordained as a rabbi in Humanistic Judaism; she was ordained by the International Institute for Secular Humanistic Judaism in 2003.^[84][85]
• 2003: In the summer of 2003, two of the Danube Seven, Christine Mayr-Lumetzberger (from Austria) and Gisela Forster (from Germany), were ordained as bishops by several male bishops of independent churches not affiliated with the Vatican. These ordinations were done in secret and are not recognised as valid by the Roman Catholic Church. At the death of the male bishops, their identities will be revealed.^[81] Since then several similar actions have been held by Roman Catholic Womenpriests, a group in favor of women's ordination in Roman Catholicism; this was the first such action for the ordination of women as bishops.^[82]
• 2003: Saccavadi and Gunasari were ordained as bhikkhunis in Sri Lanka, thus becoming the first female Burmese novices in modern times to receive higher ordination in Sri Lanka.^[86][87]
• 2004: Genevieve Benay (from France), Michele Birch-Conery (from Canada), Astride Indrican (from Latvia), Victoria Rue (from the USA), Jane Via (from the USA), and Monika Wyss (from Switzerland) were ordained as deacons on a ship in the Danube. The women's ordinations were not, however, recognised as being valid by the Roman Catholic Church. As a consequence of this violation of canon law and their refusal to repent, the women were excommunicated. Since then several similar actions have been held by Roman Catholic Womenpriests, a group in favor of women's ordination in Roman Catholicism; this was the first such action for female deacons.^[88]
• 2005: Annalu Waller, who had cerebral palsy, was ordained as the first disabled female priest in the Scottish Episcopal Church.^[89][90]
• 2006: Susan Wehle became the first American female cantor ordained in Jewish Renewal in 2006; however, she died in 2009.^[91]
• 2006: For the first time in American history, a Buddhist ordination was held where an American woman (Sister Khanti-Khema) took the Samaneri (novice) vows with an American monk (Bhante Vimalaramsi) presiding. This was done for the Buddhist American Forest Tradition at the Dhamma Sukha Meditation Center in Missouri.
• 2006: The Tamil Evangelical Lutheran Church ordained its first six female pastors.^[92]
• 2006: Sharon Ballantyne was ordained as the first blind minister in the United Church of Canada.^[93]
• 2007: Becky L. Savage was ordained as the first woman to serve in the First Presidency of the Community of Christ.
• 2009: The first Bhikkhuni ordination in Australia in the Theravada Buddhist tradition was performed in Perth, Australia, on 22 October 2009 at Bodhinyana Monastery. Abbess Vayama together with Venerables Nirodha, Seri, and Hasapanna were ordained as Bhikkhunis by a dual Sangha act of Bhikkhus and Bhikkhunis in full accordance with the Pali Vinaya.^[94]
• 2009: Alysa Stanton, born in Cleveland and ordained by a Reform Jewish seminary in Cincinnati, became the world's first black female rabbi.^[95]
• 2009: Tannoz Bahremand Foruzanfar, who was born in Iran, became the first Persian woman to be ordained as a cantor in the United States.^[96][97]
• 2009: On July 19, 2009, 11 women received smicha (ordination) as kohanot from the Kohenet Institute, based at the Isabella Freedman Jewish Retreat Center, becoming their first priestess ordainees.^[98]
• 2010: For the first time in the history of the Church of England, more women than men were ordained as priests (290 women and 273 men).^[99]
• 2010: The first American women to be ordained as cantors in Jewish Renewal after Susan Wehle's ordination were Michal Rubin and Abbe Lyons, both ordained on January 10, 2010.
• 2010: Sara Hurwitz, an Orthodox Jewish woman born in South Africa, was given the title of "rabbah" (sometimes spelled "rabba"), the feminine form of rabbi. As such, she is considered by some to be the first female Orthodox rabbi.^[100][101]
• 2010: Alina Treiger, born in Ukraine, became the first female rabbi to be ordained in Germany since World War II (the very first female rabbi ordained in Germany was Regina Jonas, ordained in 1935).^[102]
• 2010: In Northern California, 4 novice nuns were given the full bhikkhuni ordination in the Thai Therevada tradition, which included the double ordination ceremony. Bhante Gunaratana and other monks and nuns were in attendance. It was the first such ordination ever in the Western hemisphere. The following month, more full ordinations were completed in Southern California, led by Walpola Piyananda and other monks and nuns. The bhikkhunis ordained in Southern California were Lakshapathiye Samadhi (born in Sri Lanka), Cariyapanna, Susila, Sammasati (all three born in Vietnam), and Uttamanyana (born in Myanmar).
• 2010: Delegates of the Fellowship of the Middle East Evangelical Churches unanimously voted in favor of a statement supporting the ordination of women as pastors, during their Sixth General Assembly. An English translation of the statement reads, "The Sixth General Assembly supports the ordination of the women in our churches in the position of ordained pastor and her partnership with men as an equal partner in decision making. Therefore we call on member churches to take leading steps in this concern."^[103]
• 2010: With the October 16, 2010, ordination of Margaret Lee, in the Peoria-based Diocese of Quincy, Illinois, women have been ordained as priests in all 110 dioceses of the Episcopal Church in the United States.^[104]
• 2011: Sandra Kviat became the first female rabbi from Denmark; she was ordained in England.^[105]
• 2011: Antje Deusel was ordained by Abraham Geiger College, thus becoming the first German-born woman to be ordained as a rabbi in Germany since the Nazi era.^[106][107]
• 2011: One third of the Catholic theology professors in Germany, Austria, and Switzerland (144 people) signed a declaration calling for women’s ordination and opposing "traditionalism" in the liturgy.^[108]
• 2011: Mary Whittaker became the first deaf person to be ordained into the Church of Scotland.^[109]
• 2011: The Anglican Diocese of Cyprus and the Gulf was allowed to ordain women as priests and appoint them to single charge chaplaincies. On June 5, 2011, Catherine Dawkins was ordained by the bishop of the Anglican Diocese of Cyprus and the Gulf, the Right Revd Michael Lewis, during a ceremony at St Christopher's Cathedral, Manama. This makes her the first female priest in the Middle East.^[110][111]
• 2011: Stella Bentsi-Enchil, Alberta Kennies Addo and Susanna C. Naana Ackun were ordained as the first female priests of the Anglican Church of Ghana.^[112]
• 2011: The Evangelical Presbyterian Church's 31st General Assembly voted to allow congregations to call women to ordained ministry, even if their presbytery (governing body) objects for theological or doctrinal reasons. Such congregations will be allowed to leave the objecting presbytery (such as the Central South, which includes Memphis) and join an adjacent one that permits the ordination of women.^[113]
• 2011: The American Catholic Church in the United States, ACCUS, ordained their first woman priest, Kathleen Maria MacPherson, on June 12, 2011. She is now the pastor of the St. Oscar Romero Pastoral and Outreach Center in El Paso, Texas / Ciudad Juarez, Chihuahua, Mexico.^[114]
• 2012: Ilana Mills was ordained, thus making her, Jordana Chernow-Reader, and Mari Chernow the first three female siblings in America to become rabbis.^[115]
• 2012: Jo Henderson became the first Anglican priest to be ordained in the United Arab Emirates.^[116]
• 2012: Eileen Harrop became the first woman from South East Asia (specifically, Singapore) to be ordained by the Church of England.^[117]
• 2012: Amel Manyon became the first South Sudanese woman to be ordained in the Uniting Church in Australia.^[118]
• 2012: Pérsida Gudiel became the first woman ordained by the Lutheran Church in Guatemala.^[119]
• 2012: Mimi Kanku Mukendi became the first female pastor ordained by the Communauté Evangélique Mennonite au Congo (Mennonite Evangelical Community of Congo), although they voted to ordain women as pastors in 1993.^[58]
• 2012: The Mennonite Church of Congo approved women’s ordination.^[75]
• 2012: Christine Lee was ordained as the Episcopal Church's first female Korean-American priest.^[120]
• 2012: Alma Louise De bode-Olton became the first female priest ordained in the Anglican Episcopal Church in Curaçao.^[121]
• 2013: Helen-Ann Hartley became the first woman ordained in the Church of England to be elected as a diocesan bishop (in the Diocese of Waikato in New Zealand).^[122]
• 2013: On September 12, 2013, the Governing Body of the Church in Wales passed a bill to enable women to be ordained as bishops, although none would be ordained for at least a year.
• 2013: The Anglican Synod of Ballarat voted to allow the ordination of women as priests.^[123]
• 2014: Fanny Sohet Belanger, born in France, was ordained in America and thus became the first French female priest in the Episcopal Church.^[124]
• 2014: The Lutheran Church in Chile ordained Rev. Hanna Schramm, born in Germany, as its first female pastor.^[125]
• 2014: Felix Gmür, Bishop of Basel, allowed the Basel Catholic church corporations, which are officially only responsible for church finances, to formulate an initiative appealing for equality between men and women in ordination to the priesthood.^[126]
• 2014: The Association of Catholic Priests in Ireland stated that the Catholic church must ordain women and allow priests to marry in order to survive.^[127]
• 2014: The first ever book of halachic decisions written by women who were ordained to serve as poskim (Idit Bartov and Anat Novoselsky) was published.^[128] The women were ordained by the municipal chief rabbi of Efrat, Rabbi Shlomo Riskin, after completing Midreshet Lindenbaum women’s college’s five-year ordination course in advanced studies in Jewish law, as well as passing examinations equivalent to the rabbinate’s requirement for men.^[128]
• 2014: The General Synod of the Church of England voted to allow for the ordination of women as bishops.^[129]
• 2015: The first bhikkhuni ordination in Germany, the Theravada bhikkhuni ordination of German nun Samaneri Dhira, occurred on June 21, 2015 at Anenja Vihara.^[130]
• 2015: The first Theravada ordination of bhikkhunis in Indonesia after more than a thousand years occurred at Wisma Kusalayani in Lembang, Bandung.^[131] Those ordained included Vajiradevi Sadhika Bhikkhuni from Indonesia, Medha Bhikkhuni from Sri Lanka, Anula Bhikkhuni from Japan, Santasukha Santamana Bhikkhuni from Vietnam, Sukhi Bhikkhuni and Sumangala Bhikkhuni from Malaysia, and Jenti Bhikkhuni from Australia.^[131]
• 2015: In the GC session in San Antonio on Jul. 8, 2015, Seventh-day Adventists voted not to allow their regional church bodies to ordain women pastors.^[132]
• 2015: Bolivia became the first diocese in the Anglican Province of South America (formerly known as the Southern Cone) to ordain women as priests.^[133]
• 2015: The Rev. Susana Lopez Lerena, the Rev. Cynthia Myers Dickin and the Rev. Audrey Taylor Gonzalez became the first women Anglican priests ordained in the diocese of Uruguay.^[133]

See also

• Ordination of women
• Timeline of women in religion
• Timeline of women's ordination in the United States

Notes

References