Jacqueline Means
first woman to be ordained an Episcopal priest
Jacqueline Allene Means (1936–2025) was an American Anglican priest. On January 1, 1977, she became the first woman to be regularly ordained a priest in the Episcopal Church in the United States of America. The Episcopal Church's General Convention had approved the ordination of women to the priesthood in September 1976, and this had come into force on New Year's Day 1977. Women had been ordained in 1974 and 1975 (the Philadelphia Eleven and the Washington Four), but as this was without the approval of the General Convention, their ordinations were declared irregular.
Jacqueline Allene Ehringer was born on August 26, 1936, in Peoria, Illinois, to Minnett M. and Theodore R. Ehringer. Her father was a traveling salesman and both of her parents were alcoholics. She attended Roman Catholic schools and dropped out at the age of 16 to marry Delton Means, a truck driver. They had four children and attended an Episcopal church. After passing a high school equivalency test, she became a licensed practical nurse. She later enrolled in seminary courses in Indianapolis.
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This entry incorporates text from “Jacqueline Means” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.