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The Rev. Alla Renée Bozarth
The Rev. Alla Bozarth
Born	May 16, 1947 Portland, OR
Other names	Alla Renée Bozarth-Campbell
Education	West Gresham Grade School 1-4 grades; East Gresham Grade School 5-6 grades; Holy Trinity School, Gresham, Oregon, 7-8 grades. St. Helen’s Hall Portland, Oregon grades 9-10; Marycrest High School Portland, Oregon, grades 11-12. Northwestern University, Evanston, Illinois: B.S.S., M.A. and Ph.D. degrees, the oral interpretation of literature. Seabury-Western Theological Seminary, Independent Studies 1969-70. Gestalt Training Center of San Diego 1977-78.
Occupation(s)	Episcopal priest, poet, Gestalt therapist, writer
Partner	Philip Ross Campbell (Bozarth-Campbell)
Parent(s)	Alvina Golikov, Renée Malcolm Bozarth
Ordinations: Sacred Order of Deacons, the Episcopal Diocese of Oregon, September 8, the Feast of the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary, 1971 Sacred Order of Priests, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, July 29, the Feast of Saint Mary and St. Martha, 1974.

Alla Renée Bozarth is an Episcopal priest, poet and non-fiction prose writer, and a Gestalt therapist. She was among the first eleven women ordained as Episcopal priests on July 29, 1974 at the Episcopal Church of the Advocate in Philadelphia. They are known as the Philadelphia Eleven.

A fiftieth anniversary feature length documentary film called The Philadelphia Eleven about the significance of the Eleven and four more women known as the Washington Four who became priests in Washington, D.C. on September 7, 1975 has been produced by Margo Guernsey of Time Travel Productions. Both the original fortieth anniversary 2014 edition and a revised and expanded fiftieth anniversary 2024 edition of the book, The Story of the Philadelphia Eleven was written by Darlene O’Dell.

Alla Renée Bozarth wrote Womanpriest: A Personal Odyssey, a memoire account of the event and its effect on Church and Society, which was published by Paulist Press in 1978, and an expanded and revised edition of the book was published in 1988 by Luramedia Publishing Company of San Diego.

Family and early life

Alla Renée Bozarth was born at Emanuel Hospital in Portland, Oregon on May 15, 1947 to Alvina Golikov, who was born in Odessa, Ukraine, and René Malcolm Bozarth who was born in Sedalia, Missouri. Her mother had studied dramatic acting and design and tailoring in Moscow before emigrating to Canada as a refugee in 1928. Many of her family members had been sent to gulags in Siberia and others were killed outright during the Stalin era. In Montreal she became an award-winning stage actor, but did not find work when she crossed the southern border in hopes of a Broadway career.

She married Dmitri Golikov, a Russian émigré in New York, and then when his heart began to fail, she moved with him to Los Angeles. She also made several screen tests, but Hollywood had enough beautiful European actors with exotic accents and she was not called upon by the studios. She supported Dmitri and herself by designing and making clothes for the movie stars. Their marriage lasted the exact duration of World War II.

When Dmitri died, she took solace from a nightly radio program she had listened to with him. It was called, “Of Words and Verse,” an amalgam of classical music with performances of various forms of literature, and interviews with persons in the arts, politics and public service. The program director and host was René Bozarth. When she came home from work one day she found Dmitri dead with his hand on the radio. Continuing to listen to their favorite program allowed her to still feel connected to her beloved husband. After some months had passed, she signed up for one of the host’s drama classes. He interviewed her on his radio program, and soon they were married in Avalon on Santa Catalina Island. When she became pregnant, they decided to move to Portland, Oregon where they felt it would be a better place to raise a child, so “Of Words and Verse” became as beloved a radio program in Portland as it had been in Los Angeles.

Alla was born by Caesarean section scheduled for early morning, without consideration that her mother was generally in deep sleep at that time because of her father’s late night radio program. He typically came home at one in the morning, and he and her mother had dinner at 2am and went to bed at 6am, rising at two in the afternoon. Caesarean surgery at 9am violated the circadian rhythms of both mother and infant after nine months in utero. When Alla was lifted from her mother’s body and turned upside down, she had a cerebral hemorrhage. When she was three days old and finally given to her mother after the presumed period designated for post- surgical recovery time, her mother noticed that the baby’s left eye seemed unanchored and rolling freely in its socket. Horribly alarmed, she demanded that an ophthalmologist be called for immediately. Upon examining the baby he announced that she had suffered a stroke, and the motor nerve of her left eye had hemorrhaged. He laid out a plan of six surgeries for muscle grafting through her growing years, from the age of 18 months to 18 years. With each of the surgeries young Alla’s health was more challenged and weakened, triggering what was later diagnosed as lifelong fibromyalgia, a neuroendocrine pain amplification and sleep disorder, compounded by the fact that her biorhythms remained as they had been in utero. This event was later implicated in triggering lifelong fibromyalgia, a neuroendocrine pain amplification and sleep disorder.

The child could not sleep until 4am and had to rise at 7am for school. With so little sleep, she caught 4 all of the childhood illnesses which took much longer than normal to resolve. She nevertheless managed to earn high grades through all of her academic career from nursery school through graduate school, always in a state of exhaustion. Chronic migraine headaches began when she was 14. At a point during her illnesses when she felt well enough to read, young Alla devoured all of the books in her parents’ libraries, being particularly fascinated by classical philosophy and modern psychology, then classical drama, poetry and theology.

Because of his association with State (and later U.S.) Senator Richard L. Neuberger of Oregon who introduced him to his close friend, Corwin Calavan, a former lawyer who had become an Episcopal priest and social justice activist, René left his popular radio show to become an Episcopal priest himself. After attending the Anglican Theological College at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, René became a vicar and then the first rector of the Episcopal Church of St. Luke the Physician in Gresham, Oregon. Alvina, who was also known as “Alla,” shifted her artistic endeavors from acting to painting and writing, and in addition to being an artist, she worked as a volunteer for Church World Service and Lutheran Social Services, finding sponsors and resettling refugees from war- torn countries in the 1950s and 60s. This work began in order to bring her own cousins to Oregon from the post-war refugee camps in northern Europe where they had lived as farmers, at which they were highly successful in their land in Ukraine.

Ultimately, Alvina found sponsors for hundreds of displaced persons. She received awards of recognition from Governor Elmo Smith of Oregon, and was written into the Congressional Record twice. As an only child, Alla’s childhood and adolescence involved her in both of her parents’ undertakings— her mother’s humanitarian work resettling refugees, and her father’s parish ministry. She often accompanied her mother to welcome refugee families at Union Station, and she also accompanied her father on his pastoral calls, attended daily Mass and three services on Sunday, and every parish social event. She attended two years of high school at St. Helens Hall affiliated with the Episcopal Diocese of Oregon, and after her junior and senior years she graduated from Marycrest High School in Portland, which was run by the Roman Catholic Dominican Sisters of Mission San Jose. This is their mission statement, with which Alla’s spirit resonated: “We, the Dominican Sisters of Mission San Jose . . . are called to live and proclaim Jesus Christ through evangelizing, preaching, educating, and promoting justice and peace.”

When she was thirteen years old she read the writings of St. Teresa of Avila, St. John of the Cross, and St. Thérèse of Lisieux, as well as biographies of St. Francis and St. Clare of Assisi. She felt a sense of recognition in the lives of these saints which led her to realize a vocation to religious life for herself, though the expression of it would take some time to manifest. Through the poetry of St. John of the Cross, she felt most drawn to contemplative Carmelite spirituality, but there were no Carmelites in the Episcopal Church. There was a community of contemplative Franciscan nuns, but when Alla visited the Poor Clares on Long Island at the age of 17, Sister Mary Catherine the Superior listened to her carefully and told her that if she was most drawn to Carmelite spirituality she should found an Order of Carmelites for the Episcopal Church. This advice and an attack of asthma from the heat and humidity of Long Island in June also made it clear that she would not become a Poor Clare nun.

She had read Freud’s Interpretation of Dreams at 14 and at 17 she read Jung’s Memories, Dreams and Reflections, which began a lifelong study of the human mind. Her own mind became filled with a new vision: an ecumenical community of married and single women and men who would pray and worship together. Influenced by the peak of the Second Vatican Council, this later evolved into the reality of Wisdom House, an interfaith worshiping community, emphasizing inclusive language and creation-centered liturgies, and soul care in the forms of psychotherapy as soul- mending and spiritual direction as soul-tending. Alla invited her high school English teacher and close friend Sister Rosaire to be the first to join her. Sister Rosaire responded whole-heartedly.

To make sure that Roman Catholics could be part of such a community, Alla went to Rome in 1965 for a prearranged meeting with the head of the Sacred Congregation for Religious, Archbishop Philippe, who gave his permission in the open spirit of Vatican II. One day she asked Alla to accompany her to the Dominican Retreat Center south of Portland for a weekend of prayer. It was there in the forest, sitting on a rock in the wild McKenzie River close to shore, that Alla began to write poetry, which would become the core expression of her spiritual life. Poetry as prayer never left her.

It was on the way home to Portland from the McKenzie River that Sister Rosaire told Alla about the writings of the great Jesuit priest and paleontologist, Pierre Teilhard de Chardin. As Alla listened, deep stirrings of resonance took over her mind. After reading The Divine Milieu, Alla read all of his works as they were translated into English. She had found her spiritual mentor.

Ordinations and marriage

The stole worn by Episcopal priest Alla Bozarth at her ordination.

Sister Rosaire died unexpectedly at the age of 44 of pneumonia caused by undiagnosed erythematosus lupus. This devastating loss when they were filled with plans for a future community was the first major heartbreak of Alla’s life. Alla remembered the Poor Clare Sister’s counsel to found an Episcopal Order of Carmelites. She returned to Rome for a second meeting with the head of the Sacred Congregation for Religious who had since become a Cardinal. He gave her permission to join a Roman Catholic Carmelite monastery as an Episcopal choir guest as preparation for founding her own monastery. Cardinal Philippe introduced her to the Father General of the Order, Christopher Latimer, who happened to be in Rome for the Teresianum, a regular gathering of all the Carmelite Superiors. He was an American, and in the friendliest way he advised her to visit two Carmelite monasteries for women on her way home to Oregon. She met Sister Mary Roman the Superior in the Carmel of Barre, Vermont, who happened to be Russian by birth, and a highly cultured woman. She and Alla enjoyed an immediate bond in their two hour visit, and then all the Sisters joined them. After another hour, they told her that she should not create another religious order based on a 15 th century model, but keep free and stay open. They sensed that the Holy Spirit had other plans for Alla that would require her full engagement, and she must wait and trust for them to manifest.

When Alla went to meet the Sisters in the Carmel of Barrington, Rhode Island, they told her the same thing. Still mourning Sister Rosaire’s death, she went to confer with her bishop, James W. F. Carman. She wanted his advice about how to carry on as one person in a dream for a community. She bemoaned a major limitation: “Women can’t be ordained in the Episcopal Church.” He rose up from his chair and boomed, “Yes, women can be ordained in the Episcopal Church! The women deacons I’ve worked with were the finest and hardest working clergy I knew!” She was amazed. He said, “You’ve never seen or heard of an ordained woman because there haven’t been any in this diocese.” Then they began to discuss how that situation might be changed. Her future took a different turn.

With her bishop encouraging her to become ordained, everything changed. Alla entered Northwestern University in 1969 with a plan to earn her Bachelor of Science, Master of Arts and Doctor of Philosophy degrees in the discipline of speech and drama focusing on the oral interpretation of literature, which she thought would make her a better poet, liturgical reader and preacher. Her plan was to do this while studying theology and ministry at Seabury-Western Theological Seminary across Lake Shore Drive from Northwestern in Evanston, Illinois. Both Northwestern and the seminary had accepted her applications at once. She met with Deacon Frances Zielinski, director of the Central House for Deaconesses, who invited Alla to live there a block away from the university while undertaking her academic program. Deacon Zielinski also offered her a full scholarship for her tuition from a special fund to train women for ordination to the diaconate.

On the morning of her meeting with the dean of the seminary to discuss this plan, there had been a photograph of Deacon Phyllis Edwards on the front page of The Chicago Tribute. The dean was furious. Deacon Edwards was shown in her vestments officiating at a wedding in Berkeley. He paced back and forth in front of Alla waving the newspaper and literally punching the picture of Deacon Edwards with his fist, shouting, “Do you think I want any more women here after this? Do you think any woman has the intelligence to work on all of those degrees? Maybe you can come back here in four years after your bachelor’s degree and we might reconsider you.” He had barely glanced at her when Deacon Zielinski had introduced them. As the Dean became more agitated, and sarcastic, the two quietly left.

The seminary Vice Dean had heard his boss’s tirade. Apparently, such behavior was not unusual from him. Vice Dean Paul Elman stopped Alla at the door as she was leaving and said, “Don’t worry. You can use the seminary library freely, and the faculty members will all help you.” So that is what happened. Two years later between Alla’s bachelor’s and master’s degrees, each quarter obtaining the university’s permission to take a double course load because of her 4.0 grade average, she studied books from the seminary library as prescribed for each of the courses there, and took her ordination exams a year ahead of the seminarians. After the three day long battery of written and oral exams, Robert Greenfield, the examining chaplain of the Diocese of Oregon, said to her, “You have come through the ordeal by fire. You have done better on the exams than the three men who went before you and are now already priests. Well done.” Since he himself was a graduate of Oxford University and a scholar, this meant something.

In November 1970, Alla was walking past the seminary chapel on her way to the library when she heard lively guitar music and singing. She stopped and backed up, then looked through the glass window in one of the doors to the chapel. She saw Ian Mitchell, the priest-musician who had composed The Jazz Mass and The American Folk Song Mass, and next to him, a tall, bearded young man whose whole being vibrated with radiance, also playing the guitar and singing. She recognized him immediately as her soul mate. Mutual friends introduced her to the first year seminarian, Phil Campbell from Minneapolis, a few days later.

They married on September 12, 1971, four days after her ordination to the diaconate as the first women to be ordained in the Episcopal Diocese of Oregon on September 8, 1971. Rather than either one of them losing his or her own name in marriage, they joined their last names together with a hyphen as Bozarth-Campbell. The Dean who had told her that he might reconsider her if she came back in four years saw her every day in the chapel after she earned her bachelor’s degree in two years, and right on through her master’s degree and doctoral work, as an already ordained deacon. Northwestern University gave her a Fellowship to complete her doctoral degree. She was firmly planted there until her academic work was done.

Faculty members who were priests often asked Alla to serve at the noon Eucharist with them in the seminary chapel. The Dean and Vice Dean sat side by side in the back row on the Epistle side of the chapel. At Holy Communion Alla would serve the chalice from the Epistle side wall to the middle of the communion rail gate, where the celebrant would serve from there to the Gospel side wall. When it was time for people to come up for Holy Communion, the Vice Dean, who had been so kind and helpful to her after the Dean’s outburst, would cross behind the Dean as they approached the communion rail side by side, in order to receive communion from Alla, while the Dean would cross in front of the Vice Dean to avoid receiving communion from her.

Alla volunteered on the chaplain’s team at Northwestern University and finished her doctoral course work while Phil completed his last year of seminary. In June of 1973, the couple moved to Minneapolis from Evanston, Illinois and the cultural life of Chicago, where Alla had visited the Art Institute every Friday afternoon to sustain her well-being as she kept up her intensive studies, and Phil had completed three years of seminary and pastoral education. They were glad to live in Minneapolis near Phil’s family while he worked as a deacon and priest at various churches in the Diocese of Minnesota, until he was called to serve as full time rector of St. George’s Church in St. Louis Park west of downtown. Alla incorporated Wisdom House as a 501©3 interfaith religious non-profit corporation of the State of Minnesota. They had already bought a house which they loved, and it happened to be one mile from St. George’s. It also served as the home of Wisdom House, Inc. and Alla’s study and upper room chapel for the Wednesday night worshiping community’s Eucharist.

Alla completed her doctoral dissertation in March of 1974. It was later published by the University of Alabama Press as The Word’s Body: An Incarnational Aesthetic of Interpretation. She received her Ph.D. from Northwestern University in June. Her academic work completed, she was free to respond to a call to be ordained to the priesthood with ten other ordained women deacons, to break the stained glass ceiling barrier against women in all three ordained Holy Orders of the Episcopal Church on July 29, 1974, the Feast of Saint Mary and Saint Martha of Bethany.

The triennial legislative body of the Episcopal Church known as the General Convention had twice voted on a resolution to affirm women in the priesthood and episcopacy as well as the diaconate of the Episcopal Church. A complex voting procedure caused the resolution to fail by a narrower margin in 1973 than in 1970. It became clear that a fait accompli would be necessary, and so two retired and one resigned bishop agreed to ordain qualified women to the priesthood in 1974.

On July 29, 1974, Eleven ordained women deacons were ordained to the priesthood at an integrated but mostly Black parish, the Church of the Advocate in north Philadelphia. Alla and other priests of the Philadelphia Eleven and the Washington Four coped with death threats, verbal and physical attacks, and sometimes with rejection from friends and family members. They met often to support one another and did what they could in fulfillment of their priestly ministries, even though the male hierarchy attempted to subdue them and render them virtually invisible. Churches were forbidden to invite any of the new priests to celebrate the Holy Eucharist at their altars, and when two male priests disobeyed, they were put on medieval style ecclesiastical trials. A two year period of turmoil revealed levels of sexism unanticipated among church members, both lay and clergy. One of the eleven was sent fishing wire in an envelope with an anonymous note telling her to hang herself with it.

Over time, and after the General Convention of 1976 affirmed women and men being able to apply for ordination in all orders of ministry, women priests began to become part of the normal workings of the Episcopal Church. In 2006, Katharine Jefferts Schori, the Bishop of Nevada, was elected to be the Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church headquartered in New York City. As of 2024 there were approximately 6,000 women who serve as priests in various vibrant ministries, though there is still bigotry to be faced, as in every patriarchal institution.

The floral crosses are created by pulling threads from the front to the back of the stole and

The stole worn by Episcopal priest Alla Bozarth at her ordination was commissioned as a gift to her by a member of her Wisdom House community who served as a nurse in refugee camps for three tours of duty under the United Nations High Commissioner of Refugees. The artist, Luyen Trong Shell, worked in the Nong Samet Refugee Camp near the Cambodian border in Thailand. When she wasn’t working in the Vietnamese Hospital, she created this vestment with a raw silk exterior to represent the bread of Holy Communion, and the burgundy lining to represent the wine. Lotuses in Asia are symbols of transformation, beginning in mud and working their way to the top of the water for cleansing, fresh air and sunlight. At the shoulders are two Chinese circular characters: a human being working in a field which represents the goodness of God, and a human being working in a field with help, which represents the mercy of God.

In addition to her regular services at Wisdom House, for the next two decades Alla responded to invitations from academic and religious organizations and traveled throughout the United States bearing witness to the challenges of women in ordained ministry and in society. She also conducted retreats, was a speaker in the Institute for Women Today, gave lectures on spirituality and healing at Stanford University Medical School, and lectured in the arts and humanities in numerous institutions outside the Episcopal Church as well as within it. Women felt the impact of these first women priests as inspiration to break through barriers in other traditions, including Roman Catholic and Jewish, and in non-religious professions as well. Men likewise felt the liberating and encouraging effects of the Philadelphia and Washington Ordinations in their lives with regard to fulfilling creative dreams long held in abeyance in the arts, religion and human services.

The energy released spilled over into programs for social justice as well.

Alla’s memoir, Womanpriest: A Personal Odyssey was published by Paulist Press in 1978. That same year her first two poetry collections, Gynergy and In the Name of the Bee & the Bear & the Butterfly were published. The following year her doctoral dissertation was published by the University of Alabama Press with the title, The Word’s Body: An Incarnational Aesthetic of Interpretation. The Minnesota artist, Julia Barkley, asked Alla to perform poetry for the opening of Julia’s show, “Energy of Miracles” at the Women’s Art Registry of Minnesota in 1975. This began a collaboration of art and poetry that lasted until the artist’s death in 2005. In 1979, Alla composed a long performance poem called “Circle of Fire: For the Nine Million Women Killed . . .” Julia Barkley created a series of paintings that matched the poem and commissioned Minneapolis composer Paul Boesing to create a cantata of the poem which was performed at the “Circle of Fire” opening at the W.A.R.M. Gallery in 1979. In 1980, Julia and the St. Catherine College (now University) art historian, Sister Judith Stoughton, went to meet with Buddhist and Christian artists in Japan and China. In Japan, Julia Barkley gave the Mayor of Hiroshima and the director of the Peace Memorial Garden her paintings entitled, Dragons of Compassion for the Grief of the Soul, and the commemorative poem, “Transfiguration” by Alla Renée Bozarth, named for the bitter irony of the atomic bomb having been dropped on that city on the Christian Feast of the Transfiguration, August 6, 1945. They were the first works by foreign women artists to become part of the permanent collection of the Peace Memorial Garden. “Transfiguration” was transliterated into Japanese.

Before leaving Oregon for her years in Chicago and Minneapolis, Alla explored the possibility of becoming a nurse for a short while until it proved to be beyond her physical strength. During her month’s practicum for obstetrics, she worked in the maternity ward of Emanuel Hospital where she had been born. She was assigned to care for a woman who had suffered a stillbirth. For her month in a surgery ward she went to Providence Hospital to care for cancer patients. One of the women she helped was dying of cancer caused by radiation burns from the atomic bomb of Hiroshima. Such experiences imprinted on her mind to reappear in her poetry and her dedication to justice and peace issues of later years.

Alla Bozarth’s poems, “Call,” “Dance Then to Everything,” “Bakerwoman God,” “Belonging,” “Water Women,” “Before Jesus” and “New Seasons Come” have been put to music by various American composers. Her poem, “Belonging” along with the poem, “What the River Says” by William Stafford were put to music by St. Paul, Minnesota composer Steve Heitzig as commissioned by the Mayor of Grand Forks, North Dakota in 2000 for a town concert commemorating that city’s recovery process from the Red River Flood of 1997 which had destroyed it.

In 1978, Alla became a certified Gestalt therapist to enhance her pastoral ministry as a psychotherapist through the Gestalt Training Institute of San Diego. Having reading Freud and Jung years earlier would not have gone for nothing. She served as a sacramental priest for the small interfaith gathering which met and worshiped together on Wednesday evenings in the upper room chapel of the Bozarth-Campbell home, which was also the home of Wisdom House where she practiced pastoral care and psychotherapy. In Minnesota and later in Oregon, the Wisdom House community used an inclusive language version of the Holy Eucharist and other sacraments from The Book of Common Prayer.

On December 9, 1985, Phil Bozarth-Campbell died unexpectedly at the age of 37 of what the family later learned was Factor Five Leiden disorder. Alla spent the next period of her life mourning and healing in what she regarded as her soul’s home at the foot of Mt. Hood near Portland where they had planned to move together. In 1986 she registered Wisdom House in the State of Oregon and continued to conduct services and maintain her soul care practice while writing poetry and prose books for the next decades, until diminished physical health moved her to retire from active public ministry— but not from writing, poetry and prayer— in 2004.

Books by Bozarth

Womanpriest— A Personal Odyssey

Gynergy

In the Name of the Bee & the Bear & the Butterfly

The Word’s Body— An Incarnational Aesthetic of Interpretation

Sparrow Songs— A Father-Daughter Poetry Collection by René Bozarth and Alla Bozarth-Campbell

Life is Goodbye/Life is Hello— Grieving Well through All Kinds of Loss

A Journey through Grief

Stars in Your Bones— Emerging Signposts on Our Spiritual Journeys by Alla Bozarth, Julia Barkley and Terri Hawthorne

At the Foot of the Mountain— Nature and the Art of Soul Healing

Wisdom and Wonderment— Thirty-one Feasts to Nourish Your Soul

Lifelines— Threads of Grace through Seasons of Change

Soulfire— Love Poems in Black and Gold

The Book of Bliss

Moving to the Edge of the World

Accidental Wisdom

This Mortal Marriage

This is My Body

Diamonds in a Stony Field