Transcripts

SASHA ASLANIAN: Ruth Frost and Phyllis Zillhardt say they didn't set out to be revolutionaries. In the cozy living room in their Minneapolis duplex where they live with their teenage daughter, Frost and Zillhardt sit together on a couch and circle back over the events that caused them to be cast out and now embraced by the Lutheran Church.

They met at Luther seminary in 1984. Zillhardt was 27 and fulfilling her childhood dream of becoming a Lutheran minister. She says she hadn't come out even to herself about her sexuality. Frost was 36. She was third generation Lutheran clergy. Frost had flown to New York to meet with a bishop there about a job. Church policy prevented non-celibate gays and lesbians from serving in the clergy. Frost was in the closet.

RUTH FROST: It was an interview that went very well with me withholding part of the truth. And he welcomed me to the synod. And I walked out of that interview feeling absolutely crazy. And stepped onto the steps of fifth avenue, just as the Lesbian and Gay Freedom Day parade was pouring down Fifth Avenue. And I stood on the sidelines watching the sea of humanity waving placards that read, I'm gay and I'm proud. And I thought to myself, I certainly can't say I'm gay to this church, and I most certainly can't say I'm proud.

SASHA ASLANIAN: Frost ended up not taking the New York job. She returned to Luther Seminary to work on a master's degree. It was then that she and Zillhardt fell in love. They decided they didn't want their relationship to be a secret. Zillhardt, too, would have to turn down a job.

PHYLLIS ZILLHARDT: I went to my bishop and just said, I can't. And Ruth accompanied me. And we sat there and told our story, and said, I just can't live this fractured life. It's cutting me off from the source of integrity and joy and meaningfulness in my ministry, and it's sabotaging this relationship. And at that point, he was supportive in a private way, but said officially he needed to remove my name from the roster of eligibility.

SASHA ASLANIAN: Zillhardt says she grieved the loss of her dream to be a minister, but she and Frost devoted themselves to meaningful work on AIDS prevention and chemical dependency counseling for GLBTQ people. Five years passed and their friend Anita Hill, the other pastor who will be received with them on Saturday, told them about a church in San Francisco that was seeking a lesbian pastor. Zillhardt and Frost were hired and ordained extraordinarily, meaning they didn't have the support of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America.

It was 1990. Their San Francisco congregation was put on ecclesiastical trial. Saint Francis was suspended for five years and eventually expelled, but it kept operating independently. Frost and Zillhardt had their hands full. The AIDS crisis was raging. Frost remembers death was all around them.

RUTH FROST: There were gay male couples who came to our church, and one of them would say, I have AIDS. I need a community in which to die, and my partner needs a community in which to grieve. And so our congregation became known as a place of sanctuary, not only for people with aids, but also for their Midwestern fathers and mothers who had come out and spend their last few months with their sons before they died.

SASHA ASLANIAN: Often, Frost says, parents kept their son's sexual orientation a secret back home, but they longed to talk about their dying boys, so they would come out about their sons when they went home. AIDS began to change the country. Being gay couldn't remain a secret. Zillhardt and Frost Ministry had struck something much bigger than sexual identity. Death and dying was a universal unburdening of secrets. Zillhardt believes they had a special compassion because of what they had been through.

PHYLLIS ZILLHARDT: It really was sacred ground walking the valley of the shadow. And having come from a place of my own sense of feeling previously hidden and disempowered and kind of caught in my own shame. And at that time, there really still was a shame message that was being given that somehow you were sick or you were evil or you were just wrong somehow in God's eyes.

SASHA ASLANIAN: The ministry during the AIDS crisis set Zillhardt and Frost on the path they're still on today. Five years ago, they moved back to Minnesota. Their legal marriage in California isn't valid here.

Frost is now 62 and Zillhardt is 53. They both work as hospice chaplains. They say they don't need to be on the Lutheran Church roster to do their work, but they're tremendously happy about the rite of reception and the fact that the next generation of seminarians won't have to remain in the closet.

The acceptance hasn't been universal. 26 of Minnesota's 1,100 Lutheran congregations have left the ELCA since last year's vote. Individual congregations can still choose not to call a gay or lesbian pastor.

In 1990, Frost told a newspaper reporter she guessed it would take the church 20 years to end its discriminatory policy against gay and lesbian pastors. Her prediction was accurate. It's been 20 years and eight months since their ordination.

Remember the bishop Zillhardt said was personally supportive but had to remove her name. That was Lowell Urdahl, who told NPR News in 1990 he didn't see change on the horizon.

LOWELL URDAHL: I want to say I respect them as persons and believe we should listen to their witness. But that is not the present policy of the church, and I'll be very surprised if that policy is changed for the foreseeable future. I don't know how long that would be. If it'll ever be changed, I would be surprised.

SASHA ASLANIAN: Reached this week, Urdahl said, I said that? Now 79 years old and retired, he says he'll be there on Saturday to celebrate Zillhardt and Frost's rite of reception, together with Pastor Anita Hill at Lutheran Church of the Redeemer in Saint Paul. Sasha Aslanian, Minnesota Public Radio news.