Saint Lisa Larges

Saint Lisa Larges

Usually sainthood is bestowed upon an individual sometime after she has gone to her final reward, but there is one member of the priesthood of all believers who—very much alive and kicking, as we speak—became a saint long before being ordained a minister: Lisa Larges.

Remember her name as she is one of the reformers of the Presbyterian Church (USA). And in the current reformation for inclusion that is happening throughout the holy, catholic church, her hagiography—her saintly struggle as an openly-lesbian woman to have her call to ordained ministry confirmed by her church—is in itself a miracle that keeps producing miracles.

My life story intersected with Lisa’s over twenty years ago, when we were each seminary graduates and making our respective ways through the ordination process in the PCUSA. In 1991, two years after earning my Master of Divinity degree, I had finally landed a position in ministry that was both right up my alley as well as ordainable, that is, it would make me a Reverend once and for all. The job was Campus Minister at the University of Minnesota in the Twin Cities, and it had one responsibility: “To serve under-represented and traditionally-excluded students in addressing issues of oppression.” (I added “faculty and staff” to this responsibility.)

At the November 1991 meeting of the Presbytery of the Twin Cities Area, the chairperson of the candidates’ committee introduced me to the several hundred ministers and elders in attendance, as I was a new arrival from my home presbytery of Middle Tennessee. The presbytery examined me on my one-page statement of faith and approved me for ordination.

Then the chairperson brought forward one of the presbytery’s own candidates, Lisa Larges, who had grown up in and was a member of a Presbyterian Church in Minneapolis. The Candidates’ Committee requested the presbytery to approve Lisa as “ready to receive a call,” that is, permitted to apply for ordainable positions. But first Lisa wanted to make a formal statement to the presbytery; reading aloud her statement which was written in Braille, Lisa informed the presbytery that she was a lesbian.

After much discussion the Presbytery of the Twin Cities Area approved Lisa’s readiness to seek an ordainable position. Some ministers and elders in the presbytery brought charges against the presbytery—citing the usual arguments against homosexuality—and a year later the high court of the Presbyterian Church (USA) ruled against the presbytery’s decision.

For over twenty years now Lisa Larges has been ready to be ready, all the while working—without the right to vote that comes with ordination—to change the rules of the PCUSA so that all persons, whatever their sexual orientation or the gender of their partner, may freely serve as an ordained deacon, elder, or minister. For ten years Lisa has served as Minister Coordinator of That All May Freely Serve, a non-profit organization whose name is its sole mission. For more than four years—longer than it takes to earn a seminary degree—another  presbytery, San Francisco, has formally approved Lisa “ready to receive a call,” and two years ago the San Francisco Presbytery approved Lisa for ordination to her Minister Coordinator job—decisions that the presbytery has been defending, one after the other, in the church court system until this week when the high court ruled in the presbytery’s favor.

They say, God works in mysterious ways. Lisa is finally able to be ordained in the Presbyterian Church (USA) as a “Teaching Elder” (the new term for clergy in our system). Only her call to her current job is ending, by her own choice. The good news is that things have miraculously reformed in the PCUSA: a year ago this week the Presbytery of the Twin Cities Area—the body that had approved Lisa “ready to receive a call” two decades ago—cast the deciding vote to delete from PCUSA church law one discriminatory paragraph—inserted just fifteen years ago—thus allowing presbyteries and local churches to ordain faithful and capable lesbian women like Lisa, talented gay men, gifted persons who are transgender, and pastoral and prophetic bisexual people.

If you find it difficult to keep track of the timelines and church proceedings outlined in this blog article, consider how hard it’s been for Lisa and the many other persons in similar circumstances in Christian denominations around the world. Each one of them is a saint for holding their church accountable for baptizing them, raising them in the faith and developing their gifts for ministry, only then to exclude them from ordination because of their God-given sexuality. Hopefully some day soon Lisa will be called to a job that makes her a Reverend once and for all. Meanwhile she continues to be a living miracle.