Alison Cheek

Alison Mary Cheek (April 11, 1927 – September 1, 2019) was an Australian-born American religious leader. She was one of the first women ordained in the Episcopal Church in the United States and the first woman to publicly celebrate the Eucharist in that denomination.

Early life and education Alison Mary Western was born on April 11, 1927 in Adelaide, South Australia to Hedley and Dora (Whiting) Western. Her father was a fruit farmer, and her mother was a homemaker. Western graduated from the University of Adelaide in 1947 and married her economics tutor, Bruce Cheek. The couple moved to Boston for his fellowship at Harvard University and then back to Australia two years later. They returned to the United States in 1957 when Cheek's husband was hired by the World Bank in Washington, D.C.

Cheek had become active as a lay leader at St. Alban's Episcopal Church in Annandale, Virginia, when her rector encouraged her to take some classes at Virginia Theological Seminary because she was increasingly being asked to lead programs at the church. In 1963, she was one of the first two women admitted into the school's Master of Divinity program, graduating in 1969. With four young children at home, her bishop dissuaded her from considering ordination, and it took her six years to complete her degree part-time. She then began training and working with the Pastoral Counseling and Consulting Centers of Greater Washington and the Washington Institute for Pastoral Psychotherapy, returning to St. Alban's to continue pastoral ministry as a laywoman. Eventually, however, her rector encouraged her to enter the ordination process in the Diocese of Virginia, and she was ordained as the first woman deacon in the South on January 29, 1972.

When the House of Deputies voted against women's ordination in 1973, Cheek was motivated to work with other women and supporters to change the church's mind. On July 29, 1974, she and 10 other women were ordained at the Church of the Advocate in Philadelphia, and in August she was installed as assistant priest at the Church of St. Stephen and the Incarnation in Washington. On November 10, 1974, Cheek became the first woman to celebrate the Eucharist in an Episcopal church, in defiance of the diocesan bishop. She appeared on the cover in clerical dress.

In 1996, Cheek joined the Greenfire Community and Retreat Center in Tenants Harbor, Maine, where she served as a facilitator, teacher, and counselor, and later became active with St. Peter's Episcopal Church in Rockland.

Death

Cheek died at her home in Brevard, North Carolina, on September 1, 2019.