Brandon priest answered late calling
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Margaret Fletcher (left) will host her first service at St. Thomas and Grace Church in Brandon on Sunday. Photo provided |
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By Gordon Dritschilo Staff Writer - Published: March 28, 2009
BRANDON — Margaret Fletcher has had a long road to the priesthood.
"I have a vocation," she said. "God called me to it. … I'm a late convert. I converted when I was less than 30. When I came to America, they had started ordaining women, but not in the parish I was at in Connecticut."
Fletcher will conduct her first service at St. Thomas and Grace Church Sunday, though she said she will not be able to lead the celebration of the Eucharist until her ordination April 18. Church officials said it will be the first Episcopal ordination held in Brandon.
"It'll be a big deal," church senior warden Bob Wertz said. "The bishop will be here with all sorts of pomp and circumstance, music, oration of one sort or another. This will be a major ceremony."
The church was formed of a merger about a year ago between St. Thomas in Brandon and Grace Church in Forestdale, and the 62-member parish splits time between the buildings in a three-month rotation. Fletcher's first service and ordination will both be in Forestdale.
Fletcher was born in South Africa.
"My parents were both academics," she said. "My grandparents were in the medical profession. They were very, very anti-apartheid."
Fletcher said she went to a boarding school in Singapore, returning to South Africa for college, where she met her husband.
They came to the United States in the late 1970s. Her husband has a Ph.D. in computer science — a rare degree at the time — and she said they were invited to immigrate as part of a program to attract people with particular talents.
She and her husband later moved to Albany. She said the bishop there was also opposed to female clergy, though he eventually softened on that position.
Before she could become ordained, though, Fletcher said that bishop was replaced by another who refused to ordain her because she had made statements supporting the ordination of homosexuals. So, she said, she came to Vermont.
"I had to start the process all over again," she said.
Fletcher said Bishop Thomas Ely, who recently testified in front of the Legislature in favor of gay marriage, is more representative of the attitudes of most Episcopalians. A graduate of Yale Divinity School, Fletcher was ordained as a deacon in Bennington last year.
Wertz said Episcopal parishes choose priests, subject to confirmation by the bishop. He said the parish was impressed by Fletcher's commitment to ministry as well as to social justice. St. Thomas and Grace is a progressive parish, Wertz said, and Fletcher's plans mirror that attitude.
In Bennington, Fletcher said the church ran campaigns to promote energy efficiency.
"The diocese has an environmental program now," she said. "It is a very major issue in the world and the church will always look for issues that affect people and the quality of people's lives."
Fletcher said she also promotes the United Nations' Millennium Development Goals, a program to combat poverty, promote health and education and preserve the environment globally.
"We are all God's people, so we don't have a choice," she said. "We don't just support those who live in America."
gordon.dritschilo@rutlandherald.com
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