By Bob Allen
A Southern Baptist Theological Seminary alumna who went on to become the first openly gay elected official in Louisville, Ky., walked the aisle Nov. 29 with her partner of more than 15 years in a wedding ceremony at Crescent Hill Baptist Church, a congregation recently kicked out of the Kentucky Baptist Convention for welcoming and affirming LGBT members.
Tina Ward-Pugh, a 1991 master of social work graduate who steps down this month after 12 years on the Louisville Metro Council, shared news of her nuptials with Laura Ryan, who attended Louisville Presbyterian Seminary, in a Louisville Courier-Journal op-ed Dec. 7.
“As people of faith, we longed for the day when our faith community would fully affirm our love through the ceremony of marriage,” she wrote. “And though the legal right to marry has come to dozens of states in our country, it has not made its way to our commonwealth. As a result, we were forced to be legally married in Maryland, which we did last year on our 15th anniversary. But like most people of faith, we longed to be blessed in the church before God.”
Ward-Pugh said her “awakening” about her sexuality occurred after she graduated from Belmont University in Nashville, Tenn., and enrolled in graduate school in 1987 “B.F.” — she termed it in a Straight Against Hate video testimonial in 2012, explaining “that’s before the fall of the seminary.”
“It is a gift that both of our families and friends support us and love us,” she said. “That wasn’t always the case, though. When I came here from Nashville to go to seminary, it was in part to get over being gay.”
“What I quickly understood about God in the professors that I had and their relationship with God and understanding was radically different from what one typically hears, especially now, in Southern Baptist circles and other more conservative circles about issues of sexuality,” she said in the video.
“In fact I would offer that my professors in a very significant way saved my life by allowing me to ask questions and to read materials and to browse and peruse and to be authentically educated about all issues related to my theology and who God calls us to be and wants us to be.
“It was only through that and that awakening that self-awareness that I was able to actually come out to my parents a few years later.”
Crescent Hill Baptist Church, for decades closely tied to the nearby seminary community, clarified its relationship with LGBT individuals in 2013, voting overwhelmingly to disregard sexual identity or orientation in decisions about ordination, hiring or performing wedding ceremonies. Members affirmed the vote by joining the Association of Welcoming and Affirming Baptists, a group of like-minded congregations that formed among American Baptists in 1993.
The Kentucky Baptist Convention responded by withdrawing fellowship from the church, finding Crescent Hill’s “affirmation of the sin of homosexuality” inconsistent with the convention’s purpose of missions and evangelism.
In her Courier-Journal op-ed, Ward-Pugh recalled words of one of her old professors, Anne Davis, the dean of the former Carver School of Social Work at Southern Seminary, who died in 2006: “If someone is not mad at you at all times, you’re not doing your job.”
“Certainly Dean Davis did not mean that we should stir up trouble for its own sake,” she said. “Rather, she meant that as persons of faith in an ever-evolving understanding of God and humanity, we should be advocates caring for those in need — including and especially those whom the church has alienated for centuries.”
Ward-Pugh lamented that Crescent Hill Baptist Church and Pastor Jason Crosby “are now experiencing the alienation by our local, state and national conventions.”
“While there are some who will still see this blessing by Crescent Hill Baptist Church as radical, we remain steadfast in our belief that it is exactly the path to be chosen,” she said. “Whether the names on the wedding service are Adam and Eve, Adam and Steve or Tina and Laura, the love is no less real, no less from God and no less deserving of blessing.”
Ward-Pugh, a Democrat, served on the old city Board of Aldermen before being elected to the inaugural Louisville Metro Council in November 2002. She was re-elected in 2006 and again in 2010 before announcing last year she would not seek re-election and step down when her term expires in December 2014.
Her advocacy for social-justice issues, including the passage of a Fairness Ordinance guaranteeing equal rights to employment, housing and public accommodations for all Louisville citizens regardless of sexual orientation or gender identity, won her accolades as “Social Worker of the Year” by the Jefferson County Chapter of the National Association of Social Workers.
Since March 2012 she has worked as global partnership strategist for WaterStep, a Louisville-based nonprofit that specializes in water purification, health education and well repair in developing countries.
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Kentucky human-rights head commends Crescent Hill