In Celebration of the Life of the Rev. Dr. Sue R. Hiatt
September 21, 1936 — May 30, 2002

The Rev. Dr. Suzanne Radley Hiatt, one of the first women ordained in the Episcopal Church and former John Seely Stone Professor of Pastoral Theology at Episcopal Divinity School in Cambridge, Massachusetts, died of cancer on May 30. She was 65.

The Rev. Hiatt grew up in Minneapolis, Minnesota, and was graduated from Radcliffe College in 1958. She also held an M.S.W. degree from Boston University, a Master of Divinity degree from the Episcopal Theological School (now Episcopal Divinity School), an honorary LL.D. from Regis College, and an honorary doctorate from Episcopal Divinity School, which has established the Suzanne Hiatt Chair in Feminist Pastoral Theology.

A community organizer by training and experience, she organized and participated in the first ordination of women priests at an "irregular" service on July 29, 1974, when she and ten other women were ordained without permission from their diocesan bishops. (The ordaining bishops were retired or had resigned.) Having refused to permit women’s ordination in 1970 and 1973, the Church’s General Convention approved it in 1976, and women began to be ordained "regularly" in 1977. For her lifelong leadership and support of church women, the Rev. Hiatt was often referred to as "bishop to the women."

In 1971, with Emily C. Hewitt, Dr. Hiatt co-authored Women Priests: Yes or No?, a book that became a primary resource in the movement for the ordination of women, and was the author of numerous reviews and articles as well as a frequent speaker on women’s history and the changing role of women in our society. Throughout her ministry, she traveled widely throughout the Anglican Communion on behalf of women’s ordination, and presented a woman for ordination at the Diocese of London’s first ordination of women in St. Paul’s Cathedral in 1994.

She leaves a brother, John Hiatt of Minneapolis; a sister, Jean Hiatt Kramer of Brookline, Massachusetts; a niece and four nephews; and a community of friends and colleagues throughout the world.

Those who wish to do so may send memorial contributions to the Hiatt Chair at: Episcopal Divinity School, 99 Brattle Street, Cambridge, MA 02138, or Chilton House Hospice, 65 Chilton Street, Cambridge.

What Will We Do Without Sue?
Carter Heyward
St. John's Memorial Chapel
Cambridge, Massachusetts
June 17, 2002

There is no question that nothing will separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus, but what will we do without Sue? How are we to go forward without Sue Hiatt's wit and wisdom, her love and leadership, in the midst of world crisis such as ours today? How do we Christians and we others cope with this "war against terrorism" being staged by an Administration in which she, like many of us, had less than zero confidence? And what are we to make of the mess in the Roman Catholic church which (though greater in drama and degree than its kindred messes in other religious communities) nonetheless has been shaped and seasoned by the same patriarchal Christianity that Sue spent her entire life not simply lamenting personally nor resisting professionally but building and leading a movement against?

It's a question of strategy, as Sue would say. Not whether we will go on, because by the grace and power of God, we will go on, but a question of how to build our movement? How to choose our battles? How to resist injustice? How to keep on keepin' on in a church, nation, and world that urge us to hush our mouths and take off our marchin' shoes and retire not simply from our professional jobs but from the struggle which, as Sue believed, is life itself. This is why, following her retirement from EDS in 1998, she revved up to continue building the movement. This she was doing through blessing lesbian and gay unions in Episcopal parishes; preaching a Gospel of radical economic justice-making to affluent Episcopalians; and plodding on, steadfastly, in her work as "bishop to the women" — specifically those lay women, deacons, priests, bishops, and other ministers who struggle daily to live with integrity in the confusion of a patriarchal church that remains to this day profoundly ambivalent toward strong, woman-affirming women — women called, as Sue was, at the core of our spiritual vocations to resist patriarchal power-relations throughout the church's structures, liturgies, theologies, and pastoral relationships.

Sisters and brothers, it was more than her job, more than her profession, more even than her vocation as a priest. It was Sue Hiatt's life, the very core of her Christian identity, the basis of how she understood not simply her ordination but moreover her baptismal vows — to struggle irrepressibly and without distraction for justice for all women of all cultures, races, classes, nations, religions, ages, abilities, and sexual identities.

Like all great leaders, she was misunderstood by some and no doubt mistaken in some of her judgments. She was, for example, misunderstood by those who thought that her work was more on behalf of white middle class women than women of other races, classes, and cultures. The fact is, Sue Hiatt was an organizer and historian by trade and training who saw white middle and upper class women — indeed the Episcopal church itself — as a strategic location of social, economic, and political power that needed to be organized and put to work on behalf of social justice. Women's ordination and the church itself were not, for Sue, ends in themselves but steps along the way toward the Promised Land. This larger view of hers is what Bishop DeWitt, David Gracey, Barbara Harris, Paul Washington, Ann Smith and others colleagues in Philadelphia saw in Sue and affirmed in her as she sought to be ordained a deacon and to work in mobilizing white suburban Episcopalians to cast their lots with the poor and with sisters and brothers of color in the city of Philadelphia and elsewhere.

She lived on the basis of a tenacious faith in the capacities of her brothers and sisters, including white affluent folks like most of us here today, to help "make justice roll down like waters and righteousness like an everflowing stream," and in our willingness to step forward and offer ourselves as laborers in God's harvest. In this way, Sue Hiatt was an heir of the same hope and enthusiasm that have historically shaped the great Christian movements for social justice and the irrepressible passion for justice among such great Anglican divines as F.D. Maurice, William Temple, John Hines, Verna Dozier, William Stringfellow, and Desmond Tutu. Among those who've gone on before, and with countless saints of God still here on this earth, our beloved sister stands tall today, a great Episcopalian, a great Christian feminist leader of the 20^th Century, a great Christian pastor and prophet and priest.

And it wasn't that she always got it exactly "right," though often she did. Some of us affectionately called her "Eeyore" after the donkey who believed that "it's all the same at the bottom of the river." Sometimes it seemed as if Sue's belief in our capacities to help God create this world would fall victim to a pessimism, even at times a cynicism and anger that bordered on despair. In those gloomy moments, this wise and good humored sister would withdraw and seek primarily her own counsel and that of her animal companions like Job and Annie and Sissy and Ginger. In such moments, she invariably would be shocked and amazed if something good happened! It took me a long time to begin to understand and fully appreciate Sue's courage: I came to realize that her pessimism was not simply the flip-side of her passion for justice. It was a visceral, embodied response to what she saw when she prayed, a vision of a world in crisis and a church too seldom up to the task. The sort of vision that drives prophets mad — as Eeyore would say, "You see, it is all the same at the bottom of the river." It was, I believe, against this grim, depressing picture that Sue struggled courageously throughout her life to build and lead a movement for justice for all, never failing to believe that, against the odds, folks like you and I could rise to the task. This, I figured, is what Bishop Bob DeWitt meant when he wrote to Sue and to all of us ordinands, and still to this day does write us: "Keep your courage." Despite her vision of a chaotic world and an often feckless church, Sue Hiatt kept her courage.

Exactly one week before her death, Archbishop Desmond Tutu who was at EDS last semester as a Visiting Professor, paid a visit to Sue in her room at Chilton House, a hospice residence here in Cambridge. Sue had met the Archbishop several months earlier when she had been able to attend one of his lectures and, several days before his visit, she had called out for him there in Chilton House. When he arrived, Sue was still able, barely, to communicate verbally — and she spoke to him very slowly and clearly: "Meeting you has been the thrill of my life. You help me see that the truth will go on."

But how will the truth go on? How will we keep our courage? What will we do without Sue? Here is what, I believe, Sue would say and — through the power of the Spirit in which she is so fully involved — what she is saying to us right now:

***We must never retire from the struggle. We must always, as Ed Rodman reminds us, refuse to participate in our own oppression or that of others

and yet

***We have to organize! Justice doesn't just "happen." We can't do it alone, not as "heroes," not as Lone Rangers or Superwomen or Spidermen. We must do it together.

and yet

***We need to put action over talk, the common good over our personal fortunes however great or small, and substance over style and ethics over etiquette, which is why our sister had so little use for most politicians and prelates

and yet

If we live this Spirit, which is Holy, which is God, and which is today Sue with and in God, she will never be far from us. This is how the truth will go on. It is how we will keep our courage. It is what we will do without Sue

and yet

Alleluia! and let the people say, AMEN!

The Rev. Carter Heyward is Professor of Theology at the Episcopal Divinity School in Cambridge, Massachusetts.