Rev. Dr. Carter Heyward
The Rev. Dr. Carter Heyward is an Episcopal priest, professor, theologian, activist, and writer.
A pioneer in the areas of feminist liberation theology and the theology of sexuality, Heyward was born August 22, 1945, and raised in North Carolina. She received an undergraduate degree from Randolph-Macon Women’s College in Lynchburg, Virginia in 1967.
She attended Union Theological Seminary in New York one year, but moved back to Charlotte in 1968 to work in her home parish, St. Martin’s Church, for the next year and a half as a lay assistant.
In 1971, Heyward returned to New York and earned
a Master of Arts in the Comparative Study of Religion from Columbia University
(1971) and a Master of Divinity at Union Theological Seminary (1973). Before
earning a Ph.D. in Systematic Theology from Union (1980), Heyward, was ordained
a priest on July 29, 1974, along with ten other women. The ceremony violated
church canon and was not officially sanctioned by the church until 1976.
In January 1975, Heyward and fellow priest Suzanne Hiatt were hired at Episcopal
Divinity School in Cambridge, Massachusetts. As a professor, Heyward’s primary
teaching concentrated on 19th century Anglican theology, feminist liberation
theology and theology of sexuality.
She transformed consciousness, proclaimed the possibilities for women to be priests, for lesbians to be theological, and made way for new approaches to connecting the divine to the erotic, justice, activism. Heyward is the author of eleven books.