august
erched in her comfortable office
above the funkiest section of North
east Broadway, the Rev. Marsha
Dempsey describes the circuitous
path that led her to Portland.
Most recently affiliated with the Christ
Covenant Metropolitan Community Church of
Decatur, Ga., this soft-spoken and articulate
woman has taken on the dual role of director of
congregational life and executive assistant to
the pastor at M C C Portland, whose congrega
tion is primarily comprised of sexual minorities.
A third-generation Presbyterian, Dempsey
obtained her master’s in divinity from Louisville
Presbyterian Theological Seminary in Ken
tucky. She was not out during the 14 years that
she served in the Presbyterian ministry in Hous-
PHOTO BY DOUG HOPPER
P
T h e Rev. Marsha Dempsey
ton. The sadness she feels about the loss of her
spiritual home is evident when she talks about
that church’s policy against ordaining openly
gay and lesbian clergy.
“They are fighting tooth and nail over this
issue, and it became clear to me that there was
no place for me in the Presbyterian Church,”
she tells Just Out. “You have to choose: Am I
going to be true to myself or be false to the
world? It was a very difficult decision. I had to
leave the Presbyterian Church."
Dempsey returned to Tulsa, Okla., her home
town, in the spring of 1994- Shortly thereafter
she met her spouse, Amy, whom she eventually
joined in Kansas City, Mo., and married in an
outreach ministry of the United Methodist
Church. (The pastor who presided over the cer
emony has had charges filed against her for per
forming gay and lesbian marriages and has since
left the Methodist Church.)
Two years ago, Dempsey became a minister
with the Universal Fellowship of Metropolitan
Community Churches. She completed require
ments for her credentials and received ordina
tion and reaffirmation of her vows in Atlanta.
Although the Pacific Northwest was as
familiar to her as “the backside of the moon,”
Dempsey says, she remembers that she could not
get the Portland job opening out of her mind.
The advertisement encouraged women to apply
because M CC Portlands pastor, the Rev. Roy
Cole, hoped to strike a balance between male
Best
Friend
by T .K . M antese
and female staff and hire someone who could
relate to the women in the community.
Since Dempseys arrival in the Rose City,
M C C Portland’s female membership has
increased to 40 percent of the congregation.
Dempsey, who has a calm, warm presence
and exemplary listening skills, was not hired to
minister at the altar. As the pastor’s executive
assistant, she is responsible for office, staff and
volunteer management. Her single biggest
responsibility as director of congregational life is
coordination of the Sunday worship schedule—
deciding, for example, who will do the call to
worship, the invitation to the offering, and serve
communion.
Even the most determined atheist should
witness the poignant communion ceremony at
an M CC, if only to observe what is affected or
nonexistent in many churches: a real expression
of Christ’s love.
The communicant is embraced warmly by
the ministers and offered a personal prayer. The
genuineness of the comfort, love and accep
tance that is expressed during this quiet and
intimate ceremony is undeniable. It is a truly
communal happening in which disciple and
guide contemplate, get close and speak from
their hearts.
Dempsey does not know of any other church
that serves communion quite this way.
“Some of the people who come to [Metro
politan Community Churches] are so wounded
in one way or another that for them to he able
to come forward and partake of communion—
and not be made to feel that they are somehow
unacceptable, and not believe any of the
garbage that they have had heaped upon
them— to have access to the sacrament is very
important,” she explains.
Dempsey also contrasts the M CC approach
to that of mainstream churches, noting that
many churches emphasize doctrine above God’s
love, mercy and forgiveness.
“1 would never put the words of St. Paul
above the words of Jesus,” she says. “It is impor
tant for Christians to emphasize the love of
Jesus.”
Her unorthodox beliefs about biblical histo
ry and post-mortem travels suggest that literal
biblical interpretation of the past and future pre
cludes one from Christlike living in the present.
Take Genesis, for instance, and the tired
refrain, “It’s Adam and Eve, not Adam and
Steve.”
Says Dempsey: “It’s a story, and I don’t
believe it. It’s a cultural myth. Hebrews handed
down stories to explain how it all began. In
Hebrew, A dam means ‘humankind’ and Eve
means ‘mother of all living.’ They’re archetypal
figures, not literal people. I don’t buy the Bible
hook, line and sinker.”
Dempsey says the story of Adam and Eve
illustrates our interdependence.
“God did not think Adam should be alone,”
she says. “We all live in community and need
each other to be human, to discover who we are.
There is much more to the story than
‘God made Adam and Eve, not Adam
and Steve.’ It’s a good thing Eve’s name
wasn’t Matilda.”
She also believes that after death the
soul or the spirit returns to its source:
God. And she takes an unconventional
stance, saying of eternal damnation: “To
think that we could ever do anything so
horrendous that God would need to pun
ish us eternally, not just for a day or two,
is far-fetched.”
Because we are familiar with condi
tional love, Dempsey says, we tend to
project that onto God.
“God’s love is unconditional,” she
insists. “It’s not a human love.”
Dempsey adds that she wishes all
churches would address real societal
problems, like domestic abuse and drugs.
Her perspective on family values,
while not unusual for those who have
endured supercilious condemnation from
self-righteous heterosexuals, is informed
by biblical authority.
“People want to look to the Bible for
family values. W hich family value are we
talking about? Abraham had a concu
bine, fathered a child by her, then kicked
her and the child out when his wife got jealous,”
she notes. “Jacob had two wives and favored the
children of one over the other. David had
Bathsheba brought to his chamber then
arranged to have her husband killed so he could
marry her.”
The so-called traditional family in which the
wife stays at home while the husband goes to
work is a recent invention, says Dempsey.
She explains: “About three or four hundred
years ago, everybody worked unless they were
landed gentry. Nannies raised the kids in Eng
land for centuries. American Indian elders
raised the children because the tribe members of
childbearing age had the strength to do the
work. The generation in the middle was the one
that worked."
Down the road, Dempsey would like to see
M CC encourage people to vote.
“Our community is larger than people think
it is,” she says. “We need to exercise our right to
vote and be involved in the process enough so
that the next time a candidate for office is gay or
lesbian it is not an issue.”
She would also like to see the Universal Fel
lowship of Metropolitan Community Churches
receive member status in the World Council of
Churches.
“It would put us on the road to acceptance,”
she states. "W e’re one of the fastest growing
denominations in the Christian world. We have
a lot to offer people.”
out 1 3
M an ys?
D empsey ’ s D etermination
The Rev. Marsha Dempsey is an earnest addition to MCC Portland
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