Holly Ross Noble

Holly Ross Noble and her husband Rob bought land in Vermont while they were co-pastors in New York State. In 1985, they decided it was time to build their home there. Rob took an interim position in New Hampshire while Holly served a parish yoked between the Topsham Presbyterian Church and East Corinth United Church of Christ. Rob sought privilege of call in the UCC, since there are only seven Presbyterian positions in the state of Vermont, but Holly remained true to her Presbyterian roots.

Over time, she became more dissatisfied with the “haggling, bitterness and fighting” in the PC(USA) and the far-flung Northern New England Presbytery. “There was too much talk of ‘us and them.’ Still, I thought the only way to change the system was to be within it.”

In January 2000, Noble was contacted by the pastor of Christ Church in Burlington, seeking names of Vermont clergy willing to sign a petition supporting the civil rights of gay and lesbian people and to support the upcoming civil unions bill. “My husband and I signed,” Noble says. She was soon contacted by the Clerk of Session of Topsham Presbyterian, “demanding a meeting with the Session.”

The names of the 66 pastors who had signed the petition had been published in the Times Argus of Barre, Vermont. Members of the Topsham church weren’t pleased to see Noble’s name. “At the meeting, I said, ‘what’s the problem?’ and no one spoke for a good five minutes, until one person finally said they weren’t happy I signed the petition on their behalf. I explained I was only representing myself, but they still weren’t happy. They called a second meeting of the whole congregation and asked me to leave the room. I waited in my office for 45 minutes, then discovered that the meeting had broken up and no one had bothered to tell me.”

Noble tried to smooth ruffled feathers by speaking individually to each member of Session. “One person told me the Devil made me sign this thing! It was clear our theologies did not match up,” Noble says.

Topsham became a focus of the national media regarding the civil unions bill. The town clerk was interviewed by CNN and the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. “Tensions got so high in the community that people were starting to paint malicious things on the road in the middle of the night. I preached a sermon about all this asking the church what Christ was calling us to do. The people at Topsham heard it differently than the people at East Corinth,” Noble said.
Attendance went down at Topsham and up at East Corinth. In 2000, the Topsham clerk of session informed Noble she was going to be fired. Because of of the yoke, if one church fired a pastor, the pastor was required to leave both churches. The East Corinth church voted to dissolve the yoke, retaining Noble as three-quarter time pastor.

Noble quietly sought privilege of call in the UCC during the fracas. “I didn’t feel Presbyterian any more because of their negative stance toward ordaining gays. I knew gay and lesbian pastors serving Presbyterian churches well who couldn’t tell the truth about who they were. I was tired of the hypocrisy of inviting people to join, only to tell them they couldn’t serve. It just wasn’t the way I was brought up. I thought I was doing the right thing, taking the stance that needed to be taken.”
When Noble preached her final sermon at Topsham, only eight people attended worship. Her husband played the organ, since the organist had quit over Noble’s stand. Two members of the East Corinth church were there, leaving only four Topsham Presbyterians in the congregation. “There was no hearty handshake after four and a half years of service. It was the most bizarre thing I’ve ever been through, and it’s still one of the best things I’ve ever done.”

Presbyterians will have another opportunity to see the cost to the church of our exclusionary ordination policies with the publication of a new booklet by the Covenant Network of Presbyterians, Far from Home: Tales of Presbyterian Exiles. Written by the Rev. Alice Anderson, it tells the stories of 39 pastors, seminarians, elders, and deacons who used to serve the Presbyterian Church but have left or been forced out by the church's inhospitable stance. Maria Stroup is one of those profiled in this booklet.

The booklet is being mailed to presbytery resource centers, seminary libraries, commissioners, selected clergy, and all Clerks of Session, in hopes of sparking conversations across the church. To order your copy, please click here for an order form

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