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Maria Stroup
Maria Stroup came to a sense of the Holy by way of Young Life and the youth ministry outreach of the North Palm Beach Presbyterian Church in Jupiter, Florida. The pastor who recruited her for Young Life saw gifts and graces in her for ministry and put her to work in the Junior High ministry team. He also raised her sights to be the first person in her family to attend college, and she received a BA in Youth Ministry from Flagler College in Saint Augustine. In her second year of college, Stroup began to sense her lesbian orientation, a self-understanding she kept under wraps until “I opened my heart to who I was. The church had silenced me, and no silent relationship can sustain itself. ” She says, “I grew up in the Deep South. I had to choose between the church and my personal life. I fell in love with the church. I chose the church. I felt a call to seminary even though I had been taught that women should not be ordained. I followed that call to Princeton Seminary. “It was only at Princeton that I heard it was possible to be both Christian and gay. It was a liberating moment. I learned that God created my sexuality. I could love God and another human being as well! Princeton opened my heart and mind to a Bible I’d never heard,” she says. She was involved in a relationship with another woman all through seminary, but kept the relationship secret. She excelled at seminary, receiving the Youth Ministry Award. Her senior year, the placement officer encouraged her to interview for the Associate Pastor position at Bryn Mawr Presbyterian Church, a large suburban congregation outside Philadelphia. She went to the interview only to humor him, convinced that God was calling her to urban ministry in low-income areas. However, she says, “Gene Bay [Bryn Mawr’s senior pastor] sealed the deal. He convinced me by his attitude that humility and gratitude are the way to pursue ministry.” Stroup was ordained at Bryn Mawr six months before G-6.0106b became part of the constitution. She felt it necessary to speak to Bay about her lesbian orientation and to offer her resignation. She didn’t get the response she expected. “Gene said, ‘Maria, if you resign, I resign.’ I will never forget the grace and courage I felt in that moment. He told me to stay working at the church and to talk with him again if I ever felt I had to be dishonest in any way pursuing ministry at Bryn Mawr.” She later felt it necessary to resign when she and partner Kim Gallia decided to validate their relationship with a commitment ceremony and the birth of a child. Bryn Mawr regretfully accepted her resignation. The congregation’s parting gifts included paying expenses for the commitment ceremony and honeymoon and helping to cover the medical expenses associated with the birth of two children. “Bryn Mawr wanted me to stand and fight. I didn’t want to be a poster child. I just want to be seen as a human being who loves someone of the same sex,” she said. Stroup spoke on the floor of Philadelphia Presbytery following her resignation, as part of a debate on Amendment A. She said, “You call me a minister without a call. I am called by God. I am merely a minister without a church.” The next speaker said, “I don’t understand how homosexuals can look at themselves in the mirror and think that God loves them.” Stroup still “grieves the loss of ministry in my life. It is a huge hole in my heart.” She now serves as a part-time counselor at the Shipley School in Bryn Mawr and is a full-time mother to her son Joshua.
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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 The Covenant Network2515 Fillmore St - San Francisco - CA - 94115
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Kim
Gallia (left) and Maria Stroup(right); and the youngster is Joshua Gallia.