A career in broadcast journalism, a home, a family — those were the things the Rev. Dr. Cynthia Taylor wanted for her life, but what she wanted clashed with what she felt God wanted.
“I wanted to be Jessica Savitch,” said Taylor of the NBC TV news anchor.
Despite being on the road to a master’s degree in journalism, Taylor found cracks appearing in the life she’d planned for herself.
“I remember once there was a shooting, and my general manager wanted me to interview the family and ask what they were feeling. I thought ‘we know what they are feeling, and they don’t need me to come and get a soundbite,’” said Taylor, who retired as an Episcopal priest in 2022. She was the founding priest of Church of the Holy Comforter on Furys Ferry Road.
That incident was one of the moments leading to a wrestling within herself.
“That’s when I began to think and God said, ‘while you’re thinking, I have something else to consider,’” she said. “God came along and upset the apple cart.”
She tried to push ministry out of her mind and was successful with it for a couple of years. It was the early 1980s and women had only been ordained in the Episcopal church for a few years. Ordination for women was approved in September 1976 with the first women ordained on Jan. 1, 1977.
To go to seminary, Taylor needed approval; she couldn’t just sign up.
“You had to be interviewed by a committee in the diocese of South Carolina; you had to have a psych evaluation. I know they weren’t really sure what to do with me,” she said.
So after wrangling in her spirit, she met with a bishop’s assistant in Charleston, South Carolina. After an hour of complaining to him about God’s plans ruining her life, he suggested they pray. Taylor said Episcopalians don’t usually pray off the cuff, they need a prayer book, but he prayed a prayer she hasn’t forgotten more than 40 years later.
“He prayed, ‘I lift up this willful stubborn child of yours, and I ask that you break her will asunder,’ And I thought, ‘oh no, that’s a prayer he’s going to answer,’” she said.
A few moments later he walked her down the hall to the bishop’s office and simply said he had an aspirant who wanted to talk with him without saying if the person was a man or woman. The bishop said send “him” in and was shocked to see the one interested in the priesthood wasn’t a man at all but a woman.
Taylor said a lot of her career was that way, but going into the ministry wasn’t about making a cultural or political statement, it was about following her heart and her faith.
“I just wanted to talk about Jesus. That was it. There’s a scripture that says we preach Christ crucified. That is it,” she said.
She went to Virginia Theological Seminary in Alexandria, Virginia, from 1983-1986. The first church she was part of was in Florence, South Carolina as an assistant. After a year there, budget cuts forced her out.
She headed to a monastery to pray and ran into someone with connections with the American Cathedral in Paris. That led to three years in France.
Attitudes in Europe towards women in the ministry were the same as in some segments of the United States.
She recalled leading a 9 a.m. service and feeling like something was off. Someone came up after inquiring if there were other service times. When she said there were; the next question was “Will a man be there?”
“I said there would be. I said ‘Just so you know, God was present here at 9,” she said. “You get things like that.”
She eventually moved to the Augusta area where she was part of St. Paul’s and later, she started Holy Comforter which had its first service on Dec. 24, 1999. She saw the irony in the date especially when many in the world were fearful of Y2K and thought the world as they knew it would end on Jan. 1, 2000.
While she never saw it because she was leading the congregation during the service, she’d hear from ushers that people would walk in the church, see her and walk out.
Taylor followed the example she’d seen in the Bible such as Deborah who was a judge over Israel in the Old Testament; plus Mary Magdalene, the first woman to proclaim Jesus had risen from the dead.
She refused to let other people’s opinions define her role.
“In the New Testament, women were leaders in the church. You’re having to throw a lot of stuff out to say women can’t be leaders,” she said. “Billy Graham’s daughter spoke in Augusta a couple of years ago. She said ‘yes, I’m a woman and yes, I’m teaching and speaking and leading. You have to take that up with God.’”
Although now retired, Taylor has found a place at St. Paul’s as a volunteer. She recently led a Celtic service. She continues to serve people along with her therapy dog, Zelda.
Also at St. Paul’s is the Rev. Kimberly Dunn, who joined the staff in 2023 as associate rector with an emphasis on pastoral care to our parishioners throughout the CSRA and building and deepening our relationships with our neighbors—those who work, study, live, or visit in downtown Augusta, according to St. Paul’s website. She was ordained a priest at Saint Paul’s Church, Dec. 16, 2023.
Terri Degenhardt came to the Episcopal priesthood later in life.
She spent nearly 30 years in education before becoming the rector of St. Augustine of Canterbury Episcopal Church on Wheeler Road, but she initially didn’t recognize a ministerial call on her life.
“I was in Waynesboro, and the priest said ‘you’re called to be a deacon. I didn’t know what a deacon was,” she said.
Raised as a Lutheran, Degenhardt was always interested in philosophy and religion. During her years in education, she taught at John S. Davidson Fine Arts Magnet School, Ogeechee Tech and then Augusta Tech, retiring from there in 2019. She taught her English classes as though they were philosophy classes, she said.
That thirst for knowledge led her to question theology and find her own path. She joked about dating different religions. She dated a Catholic; she dated a Mormon.
She was first introduced to St. Augustine through her mother who worked there, met someone there and they were later married there by St. Augustine’s first female rector, the Very Rev. Harriette Simmons.
Degenhardt had a few defining moments in her life. One occurred while working at Ogeechee Tech. She was working 12 to 13 hours a day as the dean of instruction, not seeing her son and wondering what her end game was in putting in all the effort. She turned in her notice on the spot. Another awakening happened in 2022 when what she thought was a pinched nerve was a stroke that paralyzed her right side.
“I was never ever afraid,” she said. “I just knew God had plans.”
She knew there was more for her to do with her life and felt called to the priesthood, but she was hesitant because she didn’t think she was “good enough,” she said.
The revelation that God could use anyone regardless of whether or not they thought they were qualified came while at seminary. She said she studied the Old Testament and looked at the flawed Abraham who would give up his wife to save his own skin and realized if God could use Abraham, he could use anyone.
“One of the strengths of me coming into ministry so late is that I struggled with faith
Any mature person will do that,” she said. “I finally decided I had to submit.”
Her first church after seminary was at St. Mary Magdalene in Louisville, Georgia.
She recalled the community had a tradition that the newest pastor preached at the communitywide Thanksgiving service.
“The Presbyterian minister refused to come, but he came and preached at me,” she said.
She found her way back to St. Augustine’s where she started as a part time minister and realized she wanted to be there full time. After the rector left, she stayed but not with the title of interim. That would’ve prevented her from applying for the full-time rector position,
After a nationwide search, she was selected and feels at home in her congregation.
“I get to walk with people. I love that. I get to marry them and bury them and walk with them every step of the way.”
Taylor and Degenhardt aren’t the only female pastors in the Augusta area, and female ministers aren’t limited to the Episcopal church. At Reid Memorial Presbyterian Church on Walton Way, both the senior pastor and associate pastor are women.
Women were first ordained as elders in the Presbyterian Church in 1930 and were first ordained as ministers in the 1950s and 60s. Women serve at every level of the church—as pastors (or teaching elders), ruling elders and deacons, Christian educators, and denominational leaders, according to the Presbyterian Church America website.
The Rev. Dr. Brandi Casto-Waters serves as the senior pastor.
In other news reports, Casto-Waters said early on, she struggled with the idea of being a senior pastor. Instead, she thought a support position such as youth pastor would be more appropriate. After earning her undergraduate degree in sociology and religion at Presbyterian College in Clinton, South Carolina, Casto-Waters entered Columbia Seminary.
The more she followed her path, the more she realized being the lead pastor was the thing she couldn’t not do.
Serving as associate pastor is the Rev. Nadine Ellsworth-Moran who has been at Reid Memorial since 2018.
United Methodists have included women preachers since the early days of the denomination’s founding.
In 1787, “despite objections of some male preachers, John Wesley authorizes Sarah Mallet to preach as long as ‘she proclaimed the doctrines and adhered to the disciplines that all Methodist preachers were expected to accept,'” according to the United Methodist Church’s website.
The denomination’s first female ordination came in 1866 when Helenor M. Davisson was ordained as a deacon by the North Indiana Conference of the Methodist Protestant Church.
The Rev. Jenny Anderson continues that longtime tradition in her denomination serving as pastor in charge at St. John United Methodist Church on Greene Street.
She has a Master of Divinity degree from Candler School of Theology at Emory University. She was ordained an elder in the North Georgia Conference of the United Methodist Church in 2011. She held several positions across the state before coming to Augusta. serving as associate pastor at Kennesaw United Methodist Church, pastor of Cumberland United Methodist Church, co-pastor of Covenant United Methodist Church and pastor of Hopewell United Methodist Church.
