Through a Lens: Women’s History Month
‘Moving Forward Together! Women Educating & Inspiring Generations’ is a fitting theme to honor the Rev. Margaret Towner and other ‘firsts’
Editor’s note: In 2023, Presbyterian Historical Society was awarded a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities to digitize 22,500 photographs and supporting documents from the Religious News Service Photograph Collection. Work began during the summer months of 2023, and will continue through December 2025. Learn more about the project.
On March 19, Margaret Towner celebrated her 100th birthday.
If you are unfamiliar with her name, Towner was the first woman to be ordained as a minister of Word and Sacrament in what is now the PC(USA). Her ordination took place in October of 1956. In a 1978 interview conducted by Ed Wicklein, in response to his query regarding her reception by the church, Towner mentions that she felt like a curiosity. “So, do you turn down opportunities to speak, because you feel like a curiosity,” she wondered aloud, “or do you go, because — even though you’re a curiosity, maybe by your presence and what you say you can help other women along the way.”
Towner’s “first” became a steppingstone for other women to balance on as they found their footing. Other “firsts” inevitably followed, more stones being laid along the path, linking each of the women below together in a powerful legacy: faithful women forging the way for future generations, across denominations.
1963: First woman officer
“An educator becomes the first woman ever to hold a regional Presbyterian office in Western New York.” In 1963, RNS shared this headshot of Dr. Harriet F. Montague alongside this headline.
Montague had just been elected as vice moderator to the Western New York Presbytery, placing her “in line for election next year as moderator of a four-county area having 78 United Presbyterian churches.” Montague, along with being the ruling elder of the 150-year-old First Presbyterian Church of Buffalo, was a professor — at the time of her election as vice moderator, she was simultaneously serving as acting head of the mathematics department of the State University of Buffalo. Talk about a Renaissance woman!
First women pastors
This photo transports us across the ocean, all the way to 1963 Switzerland. What are we witnessing? A historic ceremony in which, for the first time in its history, “Switzerland has women pastors.” Held in Zurich’s Grossmuenster Cathedral, the service was conducted by the Rev. R. Kurtz. Though they are only now being formally ordained, each of the 12 women had been serving in various congregations for years, whether as assistants or acting pastors. Now, they would move forward with their formal titles, taking to the pulpit just as Towner did, in the hopes that they would continue to encourage and inspire the women of their congregations.
First woman in pulpit
This photo takes us from Sweden to Finland, where the Rev. Elisabeth Djurle is doing just that — taking to the pulpit.
The first woman ever to preach from the pulpit of a Finnish Lutheran Church, Djurle is a minister in the Lutheran Church of Sweden. The woman at her side is serving as translator as Djurle speaks to a packed sanctuary in Helsinki, where the Lutheran Church is still debating the matter of women pastors. The Finnish Lutheran Church would not ordain its first woman pastor until 1986.
1974: First Black woman chaplain
The Rev. Vivian McFadden made history in 1974 when she was sworn in as the first Black woman chaplain in the United States Navy.
Seen here on the right, McFadden was joined by Chief of Navy Chaplains Francis L. Garrett during her swearing-in ceremony.
Originally from South Carolina, McFadden was the fourth woman, and second Black woman, to enter the U.S. military chaplaincy. She was ordained as a United Methodist minister earlier that year, making her also the first woman to have earned full ministerial standing in the denomination’s South Caroline Conference.
As of 2021, women made up about 5% of all chaplains in the armed forces. Though this percentage might seem small, the numbers reflect an increase of three percentage points over the past decade.
McFadden, pictured here comforting a patient at the Regional Naval Medical Center in Oakland, California, in 1976, plays an important role in the history of women in chaplaincy.
These are only a few highlights from the RNS Photograph Collection, housed at the Presbyterian Historical Society. Our RNS Project archivists have been hard at work digitizing the collection, working their way through boxes and boxes of photos and negatives. Want to see more from this project? Follow PHS on Instagram @PresbyHistory, where they share freshly digitized RNS photos each week.
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