Nov 04, 2005  |  By: KATHERINE VOLIN  | COMMENTS     

Rev. Nancy L. Wilson was installed as the new leader of the predominantly gay Metropolitan Community Churches on Oct. 29, just in time to face a complaint brought by a conservative religious group.

Lawyers for Focus on the Family contacted Wilson on Oct. 28 to inform her that the title of MCC’s new 10-year ministry initiative, Focus on the Human Family, infringed on the anti-gay group’s trademarked name, Wilson said during the sermon at her installation ceremony.

“They think that people are going to be confused between MCC’s Focus on the Human Family, and their work, Focus on the Family,” Wilson, 55, said during the sermon before the crowd of nearly 1,200 at Washington’s National Cathedral. “MCC’s Focus on the Human Family is going to be reaching out to women and children and adults, gays and lesbians, transgenders and bisexuals … [and] our seniors, our families with children that are often not considered to be real families by Focus on the Family. We don’t think anyone will be confused.”

MCC has changed the name of its initiative to “Unfinished World, Unfinished Calling.” Wilson also mentioned that the Metropolitan Community Church of Boston, where she began her career with MCC as associate pastor in 1972, was holding a prayer vigil outside Love Won Out, an “ex-gay” conference held by Focus on the Family, on the same day she was installed.

Focus on the Family declined comment.

National Cathedral was a particularly significant place for MCC to install Wilson, church officials said, because Rev. Troy Perry, MCC’s first leader, was barred from a ceremony there 30 years ago.

“We’ve come a long way since that day,” Wilson said.

Rev. Susan Thistlethwaite, president of the Chicago Theological Seminary, said that Wilson’s installation showed that MCC would continue on.

“It is testimony to the fact that the spirit of God simply will not be denied,” Thistlethwaite said.

Thistlethwaite also announced that, in partnership with MCC and the United Church of Christ, Chicago Theological Seminary plans to open a lesbian and gay religious study center in January.

Although she grew up in the Methodist Church, Wilson’s ambitions extended beyond what her religious background allowed for lesbians.

“I knew I wanted to be a minister since I was 13,” Wilson told the Blade in September. “And I didn’t want to be in the closet.”

When she heard Larry Bernier, then pastor of MCC-Boston, on the radio during her third week of seminary school at Boston University School of Theology in 1972, she called him. He made her associate pastor while she was still in seminary. Wilson was elected a member of the church’s board of elders in 1976, a post she has held since.

Wilson has been with her partner, Paula Schoenwether, for 28 years this month. The two were married in Massachusetts last year, and when they returned to their home in Florida, they sued the state for the right to marry there.

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Wilson is one of very few women to lead a Christian denomination in the United States. Growing up, Wilson said she had no female pastoral examples.

“The first woman in a clerical collar I saw was myself in a mirror,” Wilson said. Despite her lack of role models, Wilson said that MCC is accommodating for female leaders.

“I think at MCC there’s a lot of support for women leadership because we have a lot of women leadership,” Wilson said. “I think in the GLBT movement, there are a lot of women heading organizations.”

Wilson said she plans to expand the focus of MCC’s ministry.

“We’ve changed our structure so that it will be more global and more equitable in many ways,” Wilson said. “We now have leadership positions worldwide instead of just North America.”