The Rt. Rev. Robert L. DeWitt, 87, a maverick bishop in the Episcopal Church, USA who ordained women into the priesthood in 1974, two years before the church authorized it, and was censured for his actions, died Nov. 21 at his home in Saratoga Springs, N.Y. He had congestive heart failure.
He became a national figure in the 1960s as the bishop of the Diocese of Pennsylvania. Though soft-spoken, he was active in demonstrations for racial equality and against the Vietnam War and urged politicians to stand with him.
The Rev. Robert DeWitt joined antiwar and rights rallies.
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Although some in the diocese thought that religion and community activism did not mix, Bishop DeWitt felt that "issues of peace and justice were absolutely Gospel issues," said retired Bishop Barbara C. Harris, a friend who in 1989 became the first woman elevated to bishop.
Bishop DeWitt was best known for his role in the ordination of 11 women into the priesthood. He and two other bishops broke with nearly 2,000 years of tradition when they presided over the ceremony July 29, 1974, at Philadelphia's Church of the Advocate.
By the day of the ritual, Bishop DeWitt and the others -- Edward R. Welles of Missouri and Daniel Corrigan, a former national officer of the church -- had retired. And with the debate about women's role in church having been brewing for years, the House of Bishops doled out a largely symbolic punishment of censure.
In 1976, the church's general convention authorized the priestly ordination of women.
In retirement, Bishop DeWitt became editor of the Witness magazine, an independent, liberal-leaning journal with a church readership. He also wrote a book, "Ebb Tide," about his wife's struggle with Alzheimer's disease. She survives him, as do five children, 14 grandchildren and 14 great-grandchildren.
Robert Lionne DeWitt was a Boston native and a graduate of Amherst College. He was ordained a priest in 1940 after graduating from Episcopal Theological School in Cambridge, Mass.
He served in the Diocese of Michigan before moving to Pennsylvania in 1964 and soon became outspoken on race issues.
He and Jefferson Fordham, then dean of the University of Pennsylvania's law school, once paid a midnight call to Gov. William W. Scranton to intervene in race-related violence in Chester, Pa. Bishop DeWitt also supported the racial integration of Girard College, a boarding school in Philadelphia.
When the Black Economic Development Conference presented a manifesto demanding $500 million in reparations from churches nationwide, Bishop DeWitt, citing the need for black economic development, urged those in his diocese to contribute. They did, upwards of $500,000.
In 1971, Bishop DeWitt led a group of religious leaders in a fast in front of the White House. They were protesting U.S.-supported incursions into Laos during the Vietnam War.
"I suddenly realized that I had been riding along in the back seat, and I couldn't do it any longer," he told The Washington Post. "I began groping for some meaningful, traditional religious expression of my feeling, and I remembered that Jesus said to his disciples, this kind of possession comes out only with fasting and prayer."
