Nancy Hatch Wittig

Celebrating the 25th anniversary of their ordination to the priesthood. Carter Heyward, Alison Cheek, Nancy Wittig, Emily Hewitt and Alla Bozarth participate in the Eucharist at Church of the Advocate in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. 1999.

Nancy Wittig was born in Maryland in 1945. She wanted to be a priest from a young age and practiced ministering to her teddy bears when at play.

After earning her Bachelor of Arts degree from the University of North Carolina in 1969, Wittig attended Virginia Theological Seminary. In 1971, she and Suzanne Hiatt organized the first meeting of the Episcopal Women’s Caucus with the goal of lobbying delegates to the 1971 General Convention on the topic of women’s ordination. She graduated from seminary in 1972 and was ordained a deacon in 1973. On July 29, 1974, she was ordained a priest alongside ten other women, “the Philadelphia Eleven,” and with them became one of the first women to be ordained to the priesthood in The Episcopal Church.

After her ordination, she found herself no longer part of the community at St. Peter’s Church in Morristown, New Jersey, where she had been serving, so she left to serve at various posts in the Diocese of Newark. In 1982, she became the rector of St. John the Divine in Hasbrouck Heights, New Jersey, a position in which she served for six years. She then became the rector of the Church of St. Andrew-in-the-Fields in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, where she remained for nearly twenty years. After retiring from St. Andrew-in-the-Fields, she served as an assistant to the rector at St. Peter’s Church in Lakewood, Ohio.