She Found Path To Priesthood

When the Episcopal Church decided in 1976 that women could be priests, Marj Denniston was dismayed.

“I didn’t see any reason women should be ordained,” she says.

But 21 years later, Marj wears the clerical collar and preaches occasionally to the congregation at St. Luke’s in Coeur d’Alene. She is North Idaho’s only female Episcopal priest and one of only a handful in the Pacific Northwest.

“People have realized there is a place for women in the church,” she says.

Whatever would King Henry VIII say? He inspired medieval England’s eventual break from Roman Catholicism. Rather than rewrite religion, the Church of England kept much of Catholicism’s traditions, including reserving the priesthood for men.

Post-Revolutionary War Americans understandably wanted nothing to do with the Church of England. So they fiddled with the prayer book - the Episcopal - and renamed the church for it.

Marj, who won’t discuss her age but has three adult children, grew up Episcopalian. Her church attendance never was rote. The church gave her purpose and she was grateful. In return, she led youth groups and was satisfied to do whatever the church allowed women to do.

It wasn’t in her to push for more.

“I don’t remember any call from God,” she says, laughing. “What in the world does that mean?”

During feminism’s rise, Marj clung to tradition. She disapproved of the church’s decision to ordain women and told her priest. He convinced her that women belong in ministry.

“I think he recognized ministry in me before I did,” she says.

That priest unlocked talents Marj didn’t know she had. She began reading aloud Scriptures from a lectern at Sunday services in 1976 and inadvertently made history as Nebraska’s first female lay reader.

Her deeper spiritual involvement erased any doubts she had about women in ministry. With her priest’s support, she began studies to become a deacon.

But churches vary according to their priests and Marj found herself in 1977 trying to sell a conservative priest at Coeur d’Alene’s St. Luke’s on the idea of female deacons. Her husband’s work had prompted the move.

“He (the priest) was completely against women in the church,” she says. Militant tactics weren’t her style, so she looked for another church.

She found one in the Spokane Valley. At Holy Spirit, Marj finished her studies and was ordained a deacon in 1981. Two years later, her bishop assigned her to St. Stephen’s in Spokane.

“I had the wonderful experience of doing everything there,” she says. “I realized then that I was moving toward the priesthood.”

The move was harder than she imagined. The closest seminary was in Oakland, Calif. She wouldn’t separate from her husband for three years of religious training, so she waited.

During her 10-year wait, the priests at St. Stephen’s and St. Luke’s retired. Marj knew the new priest at St. Luke’s, Bob Hasseries, and asked to be assigned there as a deacon in 1993.

Bob encouraged her move into the priesthood. A year ago, diocese officials reviewed her papers and decided to try something radical. They devised a special training program at Deaconess Medical Center and Gonzaga University.

For four months, Marj met the helicopters dropping off the sick and injured at Deaconess. She offered pastoral care to families.

Then she switched to Gonzaga. One professor at the Jesuit school offered her personal instruction in Anglican church history. She was the first woman allowed to study religion with the Jesuit priests-in-training.

“They were like 17 big brothers,” she says.

On Jan. 8, the bishop placed his hands on Marj’s head at the Cathedral of St. John the Evangelist in Spokane and she was ordained a priest.

“I feel maybe I did set a path for other people,” she says, thinking hard about her 20-year pursuit of the priesthood.

But, mostly, she’s still grateful to her church. It set her on the right path.

“I look at this parish and I feel connected in such a special way,” she says. “It’s very beautiful for me.”

, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: Color Photo