Paul Mowry Ordained By Sausalito Presbyterian Church

Via More Light Presbyterians

MLP celebrates the ordination of Rev. Paul Mowry by Sausalito Presbyterian Church on Sunday, the congregation’s first openly gay pastor. Mowry is also one of the first openly gay pastors to be ordained in the Presbyterian Church (USA) after the passage of 10-A. “This was an issue that Presbyterians had been debating openly and honestly for the last 30 years,” Mowry said in an interview with the Marin Independent Journal. “It’s just amazing that the church voted to change its constitution while I was in the process of being called. The timing has baffled everyone I know.”

On Sunday, Mowry’s long-held dream came true, as the Sausalito Presbyterian Church ordained the Pittsburgh native as its newest pastor, the first openly gay pastor in the church’s history.

For the ministers and parishioners of the hillside church, the arrival of Mowry — a highly-regarded graduate of New York’s Union Theological Seminary — was cause for celebration.

“Paul preached here as part of his interview, and when I heard him, I thought ‘I hope they call him. I hope they don’t let him get away,’ ” said the Rev. Daniel Christian, pastor of St. Luke Presbyterian Church in San Rafael, who took part in Sunday’s event. “I’m really happy that he’s here.”

“I’ve always been the person who was most likely to get into a conversation with someone who was trying to understand their place in the universe,” said Mowry, who recently moved to Sausalito with his partner and their 5-year-old daughter…

“My father, grandfather and great-grandfather were Presbyterian ministers. I still have some of the handwritten sermons my great-great-grandfather wrote in the 1790s,” Mowry said. “I’m proud of all the denominations that have moved forward on this issue, but I guess I’ve always felt bonded to the Presbyterians.”

Spurred by his friends, his partner and his mother, Mowry decided to take the risk of entering the seminary, knowing there was little chance he would ever be ordained as a Presbyterian minister.

But last year, a majority of the Presbyterian Church in the United States voted to permit the ordination of partnered homosexuals.

“This was an issue that Presbyterians had been debating openly and honestly for the last 30 years,” Mowry said. “It’s just amazing that the church voted to change its constitution while I was in the process of being called. The timing has baffled everyone I know.”

Mowry said he was overjoyed by the church’s decision, though he recognizes that it has led to some dissension within the church’s membership.

“The church is at its best when it creates an environment in which people can see each other’s humanity,” Mowry said. “If the church is doing its job, it’s pulling together people from all walks of life, with different points of view — so of course there are going to be theological differences. The work of Christ is to bring everybody together not in unanimity, but in unity. We don’t have to agree on anything except that we love God, and believe that we have been called together.”

Although he is one of the first openly gay Presbyterians to be ordained as a minister, Mowry said the response he has received from others within the church has been almost universally positive.

Originally posted in Marin Independent Journal

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