Anita Carol Hill (born 1951) is an LGBT American minister in the Lutheran Church. She is one of the first ordained lesbian women in the church and became a pastor before the

Evangelical Lutheran Church in America The Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA) is a mainline Protestant Lutheran church headquartered in Chicago, Illinois. The ELCA was officially formed on January 1, 1988, by the merging of three Lutheran church bodies. , it has approxim ...

(ELCA) changed its policy on LGBT ministers.

Early life and education

Hill was born in 1951 and was raised in the Roman Catholic faith in

Shreveport, Louisiana Shreveport ( ) is a city in the U.S. state of Louisiana. It is the third most populous city in Louisiana after New Orleans and Baton Rouge, respectively. The Shreveport–Bossier City metropolitan area, with a population of 393,406 in 2020, is t ...

. As a young adult, she lived in Crystal Springs, Mississippi, and became involved in the United Methodist Church. Hill attended

Mississippi State University Mississippi State University for Agriculture and Applied Science, commonly known as Mississippi State University (MSU), is a public land-grant research university adjacent to Starkville, Mississippi. It is classified among "R1: Doctoral Unive ...

where she earned a bachelor's degree in science. Hill went on to gain a master's degree in religious studies and a master of divinity degree from United Theological Seminary of the Twin Cities and studied at Luther Seminary in

St. Paul, Minnesota Saint Paul (abbreviated St. Paul) is the capital of the U.S. state of Minnesota and the county seat of Ramsey County. Situated on high bluffs overlooking a bend in the Mississippi River, Saint Paul is a regional business hub and the center o ...

Career

In the 1980s, Hill started out as a

lay minister Lay minister may refer to: * Licensed lay minister, a lay person authorised to conduct certain services and perform other priestly duties in the Anglican church * A lay minister in other denominations. See lay ministry and laity In religious org ...

in the Saint Paul-Reformation Lutheran Church. By the 1990s, her congregation wanted her to be ordained despite rules against

lesbian A lesbian is a Homosexuality, homosexual woman.Zimmerman, p. 453. The word is also used for women in relation to their sexual identity or sexual behavior, regardless of sexual orientation, or as an adjective to characterize or associate n ...

pastors in the

(ELCA) at the time. The church's head pastor, Paul Tidemann, created the goal for his church that it would have a non-

celibate Celibacy (from Latin ''caelibatus'') is the state of voluntarily being unmarried, sexually abstinent, or both, usually for religious reasons. It is often in association with the role of a religious official or devotee. In its narrow sense, th ...

, openly gay minister by 1993. Hill was an open lesbian in a committed relationship. She was ordained on April 28, 2001, within the

Extraordinary Lutheran Ministries Extraordinary Lutheran Ministries (ELM), founded on October 31, 2007, is an organization committed to the full participation of persons of all sexual orientations and gender identities in the life and ministry of the Lutheran church. History and b ...

but was later censured for her ordainment as an LGBT person. On September 18, 2010, she was formally inducted into the ELCA Clergy Roster. She left working at the church in 2012 and went on to fight a state constitutional amendment in her state which banned gay marriage. In 2012 Hill joined

ReconcilingWorks ReconcilingWorks, initially named Lutherans Concerned for Gay People and subsequently Lutherans Concerned/North America, is an organization of laypeople, pastors, and congregations primarily from the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA) ...

as regional director for the St. Paul area and later became its deputy director. Hill was the subject of the 2003 documentary ''This Obedience'', by filmmakers Jamie Lee and Dawn Mikkelson; the film chronicled Hill's openly gay status and the controversy it ignited within the church. Hill's papers are maintained for researchers by the

Minnesota Historical Society The Minnesota Historical Society (MNHS) is a nonprofit educational and cultural institution dedicated to preserving the history of the U.S. state of Minnesota. It was founded by the territorial legislature in 1849, almost a decade before statehoo ...

at the Gale Family Library in St. Paul.

References

External links

Saint Paul-Reformation Lutheran Church
{{DEFAULTSORT:Hill, Anita C. 1951 births Living people 20th-century American Lutheran clergy LGBT Lutheran clergy Clergy from Saint Paul, Minnesota Women Lutheran clergy LGBT people from Louisiana Mississippi State University alumni 21st-century American LGBT people 21st-century American Lutheran clergy

Early life and education

Career

See also

References

External links