George Barrett; Episcopal Bishop Defied Church to Ordain 4 Women Priests

The Rt. Rev. George W. Barrett, an Episcopal bishop who helped lead his church in ordaining women as priests in 1975, when he ordained four women in defiance of church law, died Sunday in Santa Barbara. He was 92 and died of renal failure after deciding to end dialysis.

His ordination of the women in a disputed ceremony marked only the second time in the history of the Episcopal Church in America that women had been elevated to the priesthood. His action helped spur the church to approve women’s ordination a year later.

“It took the greatest of courage,” said the Rev. Lee McGee, one of the four women Barrett ordained 25 years ago. “He stood in very small company at that time and endured censure for years.”

Barrett’s license to perform priestly functions was suspended in the six-county Episcopal Diocese of Los Angeles after he ordained the women in an unsanctioned, or irregular, ceremony in Washington.

At the time, the church seemed headed toward approval of women as priests at its next General Convention. But Barrett said he believed that there was no reason to wait for permission because nothing in canon law prohibited the ordination of women.

“I believe it’s right,” Barrett told The Times in 1975 shortly before the ordination ceremony. “And I believe these women are well-qualified and need ordination in order to exercise their ministries fully.”

Barrett’s defiance of church convention came 13 months after a group of three bishops had ordained 11 women in Philadelphia. That ordination was the first in the history of the Episcopal Church in the United States to make women priests.

The Episcopal Church had authorized the ordination of women deacons in 1970. Six years later, after roiling debate, it approved the ordination of women as priests and bishops, a move that so dismayed some male priests that they joined the Roman Catholic Church, where women are still barred from the priesthood. Today there are about 2,000 women among the Episcopal Church’s 15,000 priests and eight women bishops.

In 1965-66, Barrett headed the national Episcopal Church’s House of Bishops committee on the place of women in the ministry and was one of the earliest advocates of their ordination.

The four women he later ordained approached him at the suggestion of Bishop Robert L. DeWitt, a resigned bishop of Pennsylvania who had helped perform the controversial Philadelphia ordinations. Even supporters of women’s ordination urged Barrett to wait until the national church body acted at its upcoming General Convention.

1,000 Attended Ordination

But Barrett “felt he could no longer abide that injustice toward half of our population,” said the Rev. George Regas, rector emeritus of All Saints Episcopal Church in Pasadena. “That caused a lot of distress among lots of people in the church.”

Barrett conducted the ordination at a ceremony attended by 1,000 people at St. Stephen and the Incarnation Church in Washington. The four women knelt before him and about 50 other priests--including some of the “Philadelphia 11,” as the women priests who had preceded them were called--and received a Bible.

“Receive this Bible as a sign of the authority given to you to preach the word of God and to administer his holy Sacraments,” Barrett told the women.

He performed the ceremony against the wishes of the Washington bishop, William F. Creighton. His subsequent suspension by the Los Angeles diocese meant that he could not celebrate the Eucharist or Communion or perform other priestly functions.

Barrett was born in Iowa City, Iowa, and grew up in Pasadena, where his father was comptroller at Caltech. He earned a bachelor’s degree from UCLA in 1930 and a bachelor’s of divinity in 1933 from the Episcopal Theological School in Cambridge, Mass. He later received a doctor of divinity degree from Occidental College.

In 1963 he was consecrated as bishop of the Diocese of Rochester, N.Y., where he played an instrumental role after the Rochester riots of 1964 and helped to integrate one of its largest companies, Eastman Kodak. He retired as Rochester bishop in 1970.

He had been associated with several large parishes in California. He served as rector of St. James’ Church in Los Angeles from 1947-52. More recently, he was a bishop-in-residence at St. Alban’s Church in Westwood.

A vigorous advocate of reproductive rights for women, he served on the board of directors of Planned Parenthood of Santa Barbara.

He is survived by his second wife, Bettina Tvede Barrett; a daughter, Myra Barrett, of Minnesota; a son, Richard Barrett, of Montana; seven grandchildren, and two great-grandchildren.