The Right Rev. Barbara C. Harris, a public relations executive who marched for civil rights before finding a midlife calling in the ministry, becoming the first woman ordained as a bishop in the Episcopal Church and worldwide Anglican Communion, died March 13 at a hospice center in Lincoln, Mass. She was 89.
Her death was announced by the Right Rev. Alan M. Gates, bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Massachusetts, who said she had recently been hospitalized in Boston for gastrointestinal problems. Rev. Harris had been ordained a bishop in the diocese and was based out of Boston for most of the past three decades, aside from several years in the District as an assistant bishop for the Diocese of Washington.
For years, she had taken to the pulpit with a mantra in her pocket, written on a slip of paper: “The Power behind you is greater than any obstacle ahead of you.” It seemed at times an unnecessary reminder for a woman who spent so much of her life overcoming barriers, including centuries of church tradition that insisted no woman could serve as a priest, let alone a bishop.
That she became the first female bishop as a woman of color, and the great-granddaughter of an enslaved African American, made her achievement all the more remarkable. She was divorced, had never graduated from college or seminary and had served as a priest for less than a decade when she was consecrated a bishop on Feb. 11, 1989, amid thunderous applause that dwarfed the objections of two protesters.