40th Anniversary of Women's Leadership
November 12, 2010
On November 12 at the Diocese of Atlanta’s annual Diocesan Council, Lueta Bailey of Griffin, Georgia, received an award commemorating the 40th anniversary of women being seated as deputies to the Episcopal Church’s triennial legislative gathering, called General Convention.
Bailey was the first woman to address General Convention, in 1967 in Seattle, and was among the first women seated at the 1970 General Convention in Houston.
Bonnie Anderson, president of the Episcopal Church’s House of Deputies, presented the award. “We would not be where we are today without the courage and determination of Mrs. Bailey and her colleagues who worked so hard to help the Episcopal Church understand that its discriminatory policies were not God's will,” Anderson said.
Bailey, who was an active leader in the Episcopal Church for more than three decades, attended the presentation with her son, David, and also attended a luncheon in her honor with other women deputies whose work she made possible.
By the time she was seated at General Convention in 1970, Bailey was a veteran in the campaign against discrimination. In the mid-1960s, she and her husband, Seaton, along with fellow parishioners at St. George’s, played a key role in desegregating two lunch counters in Griffin in the face of Ku Klux Klan opposition. During her leadership in the Diocese of Atlanta, she also helped lead the integration of the diocesan camp and conference center.
Bailey went on to become the first woman to chair the church’s powerful Standing Committee on Program, Budget and Finance and served nine years on the church’s Executive Council.
Read the full Episcopal News Service story.
Listen to Bonnie's remarks
Listen to Mrs. Bailey's remarks
The text of Bonnie Anderson's remarks at the presentation are below.
Forty years ago, at the General Convention in 1970, Lueta Bailey became one of the first women seated in the House of Deputies. I would not be here today, and many of you would not be here today, without the courage and determination of Mrs. Bailey and her colleagues who worked so hard to get the Church to understand that its discriminatory policies were men’s will, and not God’s will.
Make no mistake: The moment in 1970 when Mrs. Bailey and her colleagues finally took their rightful place in the House of Deputies was one of great celebration, but it did not happen by accident and it did not happen simply because time marched on. It happened because Mrs. Bailey and her peers worked tirelessly for decades to organize, to advocate and to insist that our remarkable Episcopal polity, rooted in our belief that the Holy Spirit works through laypeople, clergy and bishops alike, needed the voices and wisdom of women. The Holy Spirit could not lead the church toward the reign of God without the full participation of its laywomen. Mrs. Bailey knew that, and she worked for more than a decade to help bring it about.
By the time Mrs. Bailey was seated in Houston as one of the first women deputies, she had already swept a lot of other discrimination into history’s dustbin:
In the mid-1960s, she and her husband, Seaton, along with fellow parishioners at St. George’s, played a key role in desegregating two lunch counters in Griffin in the face of Ku Klux Klan opposition.
During her leadership in the Diocese of Atlanta, she also helped lead the integration of the diocesan camp and conference center.
In 1967, as presiding officer of the Triennial Meeting of the Women of the Church, she became the first woman ever to address General Convention. She did so on the occasion of the first passage of the resolution to seat women as deputies—the change to our church’s constitution required two votes. Remembering that historic day, she said: ““I decided early that morning to wear a red silk suit and announce that to the whole Triennial meeting, that if they voted no I was dressed properly for the martyr and if they voted yes I was dressed properly for the celebration.”
Thank God she was dressed for the celebration.
As historic as they were, Mrs. Bailey’s speeches that day were not even her first controversy of that General Convention. In 1967, Presiding Bishop John Hines had proposed the Special Program, a $9 million initiative to support dispossessed and oppressed people. He wanted the women’s Triennial Meeting to contribute a third of the program’s budget—$3 million dollars—and as it happened, the women were scheduled to vote on the issue before the General Convention considered it. That meant that the women would be deciding whether to fund this signature initiative before the men had a chance to weigh in. Not everyone was happy about that.
Here’s how Mrs. Bailey remembers it: “…harassment is not a good word but you never walked anywhere that some man who was a deputy didn’t bring up the subject. Some were encouraged but others were not and that’s why we kept the doors locked. Because I knew some of those prominent men and they could come in and influence us.”
Now, Mrs. Bailey knew when to keep the doors locked, but she also knew when to fling them wide open. She went on to serve nine years on the Church’s Executive Council, on which I serve today. When she started, the men of Executive Council would go off in the evening to a bar located on a men’s-only floor of the building and they would sort out the business of the day. She and her other female colleagues were instrumental in getting that bar moved downstairs, where women could join in the conversation—and the drinks. And Mrs. Bailey, I would like to thank you personally for that essential contribution to Executive Council meetings!
In the Episcopal Church, we strive for the kind of justice that Mrs. Bailey has spent her life achieving. But we are an institution riddled with human beings, and so sometimes our progress is slow and halting and we become divided from one another—men from women, bishops from deputies, people of color from white people, gay people from straight people. And every time we make a little bit of progress toward God’s kingdom, we have to do two things. We have to celebrate, and we have to be reconciled to one another.
When women were finally seated as deputies in 1970, after all of those years of struggle, the question arose about whether or not there should be a moment of recognition before the House took up its business for the day. Mrs. Bailey insisted that there should be. “The debate had been so ugly and so long in the church that there had to be a moment of reconciliation,” she remembered. “Let’s forget all of those bad words, and they had hurt. You know, stand there and be a woman.”
Mrs. Bailey, I am pleased to present this award to you today in recognition of your invaluable service to the Episcopal Church, and I am honored to stand here with you today and be a woman.
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