A year at Yale Divinity School in the late 1950s convinced Sylvia Sanders Kelley not to become a “spinster minister,” as her male classmates called female students. Instead, the experience inspired her to become a champion of the underdog and to work to advance the rights of women, in the church, the pulpit and the world.
“She always wanted to know, ‘How is the church going to make the world a better place?’ Faith was something that brought with it justice, fairness and equity,” said her nephew, Marthame Sanders, who served as pastor at Oglethorpe Presbyterian Church for 11 years. “She was awesome, she was always asking substantive questions.”
Sanders recalled gatherings at the Buckhead home of Sylvia and her husband, Blaine Kelley Jr., with aunts, uncles, grandparents and cousins. Meals were usually catered, he said, because Sylvia wanted to spend time talking, not cooking. She wasn’t one for chitchat — she wanted to learn what was going on in everyone’s life and how they felt about it.
The daughter of Marthame Elliott Sanders and Flossie Wilkes Sanders, Sylvia Sanders Kelley, 92, died in her Atlanta home on March 8, International Women’s Day. She grew up in Ansley Park and graduated Phi Beta Kappa, Magna Cum Laude, from Vanderbilt University before attending the University of Texas on a Woodrow Wilson Fellowship and earning a master’s degree in history. A Rockefeller Fellowship took her to Yale.
Sylvia returned to Atlanta and began teaching history at the Westminster Schools. She met, and then in 1959 married, Blaine — who became a successful commercial real estate developer. The couple had three children, “and my mother was always there for us,” said Katharine Kelley. “Her family was her number one passion and love.”
Sylvia and Blaine Kelley together were advisory board members of Vanderbilt Divinity School, Duke University School of Public Policy, Harvard Divinity School, the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. Board of Sponsors of Morehouse College and Emory University.
In the 1970s, Sylvia Kelley organized and chaired Women of Faith for the ERA, an interfaith group advocating for passage of the Equal Rights Amendment. Retired Presbyterian minister Joanna Adams joined the group, and the two women became friends.
“She was going against the tide by claiming the gifts that women have,” said Adams. “Like her mother, Sylvia was brilliant and physically beautiful. I never met anyone as intellectually astute. And she loved God with her mind and her heart.”
Credit: Courtesy of family
Credit: Courtesy of family
Adams became part of another organization Kelley organized, Women in the Spirit, a collection of women who wanted, “to think more deeply about the role of women in society and in the church. She was a warrior for progressive thought.”
In the early 1970s, Kelley endowed a lectureship at Vanderbilt Divinity School in honor of Antoinette Brown, the first woman to be ordained in a Christian church in the United States. The lectureship would bring to Nashville women of all faiths who were emerging feminist religious scholars.
“My hope in funding the Antoinette Brown Lecture Series was to educate the leaders who could bring about equality of opportunity and advancement for women,” Kelley wrote in 1999. “From the beginning I always saw the lectures as a first step, not only for leaders of religious institutions but for women and men interested in the leadership of all areas of society … My vision was then and continues to be today that the lecture series can have a dramatic impact upon the world.”
Adams said that a couple of years ago, the remaining members of Women in the Spirit held a get together. Sylvia was one of those attending. “She had lost some of her sight and much of her hearing, but she was still the brightest among us,” Adams said. “She really was unstoppable.”
Sylvia Sanders Kelley is survived by her husband Blaine Kelley Jr., her sons Blaine Kelley III (Martha) and Alan Kelley (Kristin Pedersen), her daughter Katharine Kelley (Chad Riedel) and eight grandchildren. A celebration of life will be held at Trinity Presbyterian Church on Howell Mill Road at 11 a.m. on April 4, followed by a reception. Donations may be sent to the Antoinette Brown Lecture Fund at Vanderbilt Divinity School.
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