Merrill Bittner

Merrill Bittner was born in 1946 and raised in South Pasadena, California, where her family attended St. James’ Episcopal Church. As a young adult, she earned her biology degree from Lake Erie College (1969) before attending Bexley Hall, shortly after its merger with Colgate Rochester Divinity School. She graduated with her Master of Divinity in 1972. After graduation, she served in the Diocese of Rochester (1973-1976) where she was an associate at the Church of the Good Shepherd in Webster, New York, and a co-founder of the Rochester Women’s Jail Project.

On July 29, 1974 Bittner was among the “Philadelphia Eleven,” the first eleven women to be ordained priests in The Episcopal Church over the objections of church leadership. After the ordination, she experienced such hostility that she stepped away from the church in 1975, writing in her resignation that “I have not left the church, the church has left me. Indeed, perhaps as a woman, I have always been of, but not fully in the church.” She returned in 1998, serving first as an associate at St. Barnabas’ Church in Rumford, Maine, and later as priest-in-charge until her retirement in 2007. During that period she also worked as a hospice chaplain. In 2013, Bittner married her long-term partner, Nancy Noppa.