Alison Cheek

The Rev. Carter Heyward (left) and the Rev. Allison Cheek serve at a special convention Eucharist honoring the ministry of women, 1994.

Alison Cheek (1927-2019) was born and raised near Adelaide, Australia, where her family owned a vineyard. During World War II, she attended the University of Adelaide, graduating in 1947. She moved to the United States after marrying Bruce Cheek, an economist employed by the World Bank. In 1963 she began her theological studies at Virginia Theological Seminary as one of the first two women to be admitted. She graduated in 1969, taking six years to complete the degree as she was raising four children at the time, and was ordained deacon in 1972. She then served as an assistant deacon at St. Alban’s Episcopal Church in Annandale, Virginia. On July 29, 1974, she, along with the other members of the “Philadelphia Eleven,” became one of the first women ordained as priests in The Episcopal Church in spite of her concerns that taking such a step might jeopardize her visa.

On November 10, 1974, despite the controversy surrounding her ordination, Cheek celebrated the Eucharist at St. Stephen and the Incarnation Church in Washington, D.C. She was the first female Episcopal priest to publicly do so. She served as an assistant at the church until 1979, when she relocated to Trinity Memorial Church in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, after her husband’s death. In addition to being a psychotherapist in private practice, she taught at Episcopal Divinity School, where she was the director of Studies in Feminist Liberation Theology from 1989 to 1995.

After her departure from Episcopal Divinity School, Cheek took a position with the Greenfire Retreat Center in Tenants’ Harbor, Maine. She remained there until 2013, when she retired to North Carolina. Alison Cheek died on September 1, 2019, at the age of 92.