Philadelphia’s ‘voice of the oppressed’ dies at 81

Paul Washington greeting those assembled for the ordination of the first women priests at the Church of the Advocate in 1974.

Paul Washington, a leader in movements for justice in the church and society over many decades, died Oct. 9, 2002. Washington, who served as rector of Philadelphia’s Church of the Advocatefrom 1962 until 1987, was "the soul and conscience of the city and the nation, for not only African Americans but also all the marginalized," columnist Acel Moore wrote in The Philadelphia Inquirer. Other tributes referred to Washington as the "voice of the oppressed," a "steadfast acolyte of Christian liberalism," and "one of the giants of Spirit-rooted activism for peace and justice of this past generation."

Washington opened the Church of the Advocate to meetings of the Black Panthers, Vietnam war resisters and other radical groups. At the 1969 Special General Convention of the Episcopal Church, he led a walkout in protest of the church’s footdragging on the issue of black activist demands for reparations payments from the churches. In 1974, he welcomed the "Philadelphia 11" to the Church of the Advocate for the first ordination of women to the priesthood in the Episcopal Church.

"This is not the church of ‘the comfortable pew,’" Washington wrote in his 1994 memoir, The Autobiography of Father Paul M. Washington (with David Gracie, Temple University Press). "In fact, the Advocate, like its Lord, has been ‘numbered among the transgressors.’" To illustrate his point, Washington quotes from a 1968 memo to the director of the FBI: "The Rev. Paul M. Washington, Rector of the Church of the Advocate, has made his church’s facilities available to Negro extremists and has associated with them at his church. He has also been quoted in the Negro press as being against the Vietnam War, and desirous that the funds being expended on that conflict be used to solve the problems of the ghetto."

Washington also spoke out on homelessness, gay and lesbian concerns, and a range of international justice issues. In 1980, while Americans were being held hostage in Iran, he defied a U.S. travel ban to take part in a conference there, then returned to ask for a U.S. apology for past interference in that country. More recently, he wrote about the Palestinian issue for The Witness.

When Washington served on a panel investigating the city of Philadelphia’s 1985 bombing of MOVE headquarters, he was "unflinching in his criticism of police tactics and of the conduct of his longtime friend, then-Mayor W. Wilson Goode," an obituary in The Philadelphia Inquirer reported (10/9/02).

Washington, born in Charleston, S.C., in 1921 and raised a Baptist, became an Episcopalian while in college. He graduated from Lincoln University and Philadelphia Divinity School, and was ordained a priest in 1947. After serving at Philadelphia’s Church of the Crucifixion, he spent six years teaching at a college in Liberia. He became vicar of St. Cyprian in Elmwood in 1954, then rector of the Church of the Advocate in 1962.

Washington wrote that the "crowning glory" of his Advocate ministry was the invitation from his former parishioner Barbara Harris to preach at her consecration as the first woman bishop in the Anglican Communion. Harris officiated at Washington’s Oct. 14 memorial service. – Witness staff