Background
Born in Evansville, Indiana, Simpson grew up in Texas City, Texas.
Born in Evansville, Indiana, Simpson grew up in Texas City, Texas.
She subsequently entered the New York School for Deaconesses and Other Church Workers in New York City from which she graduated in 1949.
This article is about the Episcopal priest. Mary Michael Simpson (December 1, 1925 – July 20, 2011) was an American minister. She was raised a Methodist but in her senior year of college she became an Episcopalian.
After graduation she spent six years as a missionary to Liberia.
Upon her return to the United States, she became a religious sister and took her life vows with the Order of Saint Helena in Vails Gate, New York in 1956. She was soon after appointed the head of a girls" school operated by the order, Margaret Hall in Versailles, Kentucky, where she remained for about a decade.
She then returned to the convent in Vails Gate to become director of novices. She had previously not been a vocal advocate for the role of women in the church, although she had privately supported the ordination of women.
In 1974 she was appointed a deacon at the Cathedral of Saint John the Divine in New York City and spent the next three years on the staff of that church working as a pastoral counselor
She was the first ordained woman to preach at Westminster Abbey when she visited London in April 1978. Simpson"s visit brought together Anglican groups in favor of women"s ordination and led to the founding of the Movement for the Ordination of Women. Simpson died in Augusta, Georgia in 2011 at the age of 85.