Boston Presbytery may be first to ordain man who became female
By John H. Adams, The Layman Online, August 21, 2003
The Presbytery of Boston’s Committee on the Preparation for the Ministry has accepted a Presbyterian who underwent gender-change surgery to become a woman as a candidate for ordination as a minister of Word and sacrament.
Sàra J. HerwigIf the committee recommends that Sàra J. Herwig be ordained and the presbytery concurs, Herwig would be the first transgendered person in the Presbyterian Church (USA) to be ordained after declaring that he was surgically altered to change his gender.
The only similar case involved Erin Swenson of Atlanta, who was originally ordained as a man (Eric) but later declared that he was a woman. Swenson successfully repelled a move in the Presbytery of Greater Atlanta in 1995-96 to annul her ordination.
In arguing against Atlanta commissioners who opposed her ordination, Swenson said, “I have spent the best years of my life wringing enough energy from myself to carry on as husband, father, and minister against a personal reality that seemed wholly unacceptable to not only others, but to myself and God as well.” Swenson, who has a counseling practice, does not serve as a local church pastor.
It was Swenson who announced Herwig’s status as a candidate for ministry during WOW! 2003, a recent inter-denominational meeting of homosexual activists in Pennsylvania.
Herwig serves as an intern at First Presbyterian Church in Waltham, Mass., a congregation that is affiliated with More Light Presbyterians. The More Light movement exists to repeal denominational standards that prohibit the ordination of practicing homosexuals and bisexuals.
According to denominational statistics, the Waltham congregation had 46 members at the end of 2002. Herwig is the facilitator of a young adult study at the church.
On its Web site, the congregation describes itself as “one of the most diverse churches in the country, we reflect the diversity of the Waltham community including a wealth of ethnic and racial cultures, young and old, rich and poor, male and female, partnered and single, transgender, gay, lesbian, bisexual and straight.”
In 2002, following the 75-percent affirmation of the PCUSA’s constitutional ordination standard, the session of the Waltham congregation sent the presbytery a letter lamenting that outcome and stating, “It cannot be right that there are two classes of members in our churches – those allowed to serve and those who are not. Nor can it be right that a significant fraction of the PC(USA) membership is implicitly condemned as being heretic in its interpretation of Scripture … We covenant to be faithful to the core of the Constitution of the PC(USA) which requires us to be a welcoming and inclusive community of saints.”
Herwig received her master of divinity degree from Gordon Conwell Theological Seminary in Boston, an evangelical institution. A former classmate told The Layman Online that Gordon Conwell’s faculty would find Herwig’s gender-change incompatible with Biblical teachings.