GA06096

TAMFS lunch

Spahr recalls career experiences

by Bill Lancaster

BIRMINGHAM, June 20 — The Rev. Jane Adams Spahr, the minister-director of That All May Freely Serve, told with great energy and humor a series of anecdotes and memories spanning her career as an advocate for gay and lesbian ordination. The title of her talk was "Sharing of Our Sacred Stories — Why We Do This Work of Love and Justice."

"I do love who we are, and all these wonderful people who are here," she said, holding one of the stoles of the people who had died. "It's hard because of the people who aren't here."

Spahr recounted how she had been "thrown out" of the Presbyterian church in 1982 for the first time for being a lesbian. At that point, she was made a missionary to the larger church by the Metropolitan Community Church in San Francisco.

Spahr had wanted to be pastor of a More Light congregation. Instead, she was given the opportunity to become an evangelist — a pastor without a church who spreads the good news. But she said when she hears the word evangelist now, she hears it differently.

She recounted an African-American woman who had worked in civil rights. "She said to me that as an African-American woman, she knew 20 years ago that she was called to invite people to do racial justice," Spahr said. "She asked me, 'Are you called to do this for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgendered persons? If you are, do it. If not, don't do it.' "

Spahr said when she began as an evangelist, she went to Pittsburgh — "my birthplace" — to speak to a group. "A woman met me at the airport, and she was so frightened. She said there had been a bomb threat at the place where you are speaking."

Spahr said the earlier conversation with the African-American woman came to mind. "I felt God everywhere in my body, I could see her everywhere. This wonderful lesbian couple drove me past my home, and my grandparents' home. The Pittsburgh paper said, 'Lesbian evangelist comes home.'

"Then we went to Bethlehem, PA, where I was going to speak at a Moravian seminary. They greeted me and said, 'There has been a bomb threat.' Plain-clothes people were following us.

"For all of us who do this work, everywhere, there are people who want to speak to you and tell you about their lives. They will say, 'I can't speak, but you are speaking for me.' "