SHU Protestant Chaplain Talks About Accepting Her Sexuality

The Rev. Sara D. Smith said God kept her going when she doubted herself

Sacred Heart University’s Protestant chaplain, the Rev. Sara D. Smith talked about struggling to come to terms with her sexuality in a recent SHU-sponsored virtual lecture, “God and I are Fine … and the Church is Lucky to Have Me.” Here is her story.

Smith, senior minister of the United Congregational Church of Bridgeport, recently began working part time at SHU’s office of campus ministry as well. She said she has been an ordained Christian minister for 25 years and has been out as a lesbian more than 30 years. Growing up in Kentucky as one of four children, she was taught that God loved her no matter what—something she said carried her through times when others did not love her.

Smith knew she wanted to be a pastor when she was 8. She earned her bachelor’s degree in psychology, with a minor in religion, from Texas Christian University (TCU), where she proved herself as a leader, serving as only its third female student body president. She also joined a sorority there, and was honored as TCU’s “outstanding senior student” in 1985.

Smith’s family made a living farming their land, and when they fell on hard times and were struggling to hold onto the farm, she enrolled in law school at the University of Houston Law Center to learn how to save it. However, the farm was gone before she graduated.

During law school, Smith became the first woman chair of the American Bar Association’s Law Student Division (the world’s largest student organization, with more than 40,000 students). She traveled all over the United States, meeting important public figures like Hillary Rodham Clinton, former first lady and secretary of state, and Sarah Weddington, an attorney who represented “Jane Roe” in the Roe v. Wade case at the U.S. Supreme Court. “I got to meet some of these women who had paved the way for me; other pioneers,” said Smith. “But I also got to be one myself.”

During this time, her best friend Mike came out to her as gay, and she admitted she responded badly. She did not realize yet that she was a lesbian, she said, and she was not accepting of his news. Then, after she graduated from law school in 1988 with her doctor of jurisprudence, she began working for the U.S. Department of Labor as a trial attorney. She met a woman there and, for the first time, she found herself interested. When Smith told Mike that she was gay, he said, mockingly, “Yeah, and the Berlin wall is going to fall.”

Smith struggled with her sexual orientation for more than a year, and she worried about what others would think of her. Then in November 1989, she woke up one day and finally felt peace. “I’m gay, and it’s okay,” she remembers feeling. That same week, the Berlin Wall fell.

Smith entered a relationship with a woman, but she was not honest to her friends, family or church about it because she was afraid of the repercussions. She was still working as a lawyer at this time but was unhappy with it. When someone at her Bible study suggested she become a minister, she pursued the idea. Soon, she got a call from TCU’s Brite Divinity School, offering to pay for her tuition and living expenses.

Though Smith, like the rest of her family, had been a member of the United Methodist Church, she joined the United Church of Christ after she began her ministry studies because the Methodist church shunned homosexuality and rejected gay ministers. (In more recent years, the church has said it welcomes laypersons as congregants “without respect to sexual orientation or practice,” though it does not accept gay ministers or permit same-sex weddings.)

Upon graduation from seminary with her master of divinity degree in 1995, Smith realized she had to come out to her family, because they would learn that she switched churches and would wonder why. Her mother’s reaction was very hurtful, but Smith said the rest of her family handled the announcement well, especially her sisters.

In 1996, she became one of the first of 20 gay clergy ordained in the United States by the United Church of Christ and served as campus minister at the University of Colorado-Boulder. When Matthew Shepard, a University of Wyoming student, was beaten to death in 1998 for being gay, Smith preached on the following Sunday, even though she had told herself it was something she would never do. When the congregation gave her a standing ovation, she realized preaching was part of her calling too.

Soon she met a woman named Lee Ann, and the two of them had a civil commitment ceremony. Lee Ann subsequently lost her job as a youth minister at an Episcopal church, and she and Smith sued the Diocese of Colorado, which settled rather than going to trial.

Smith herself was taken to trial by local Presbyterians, who called her “the Devil’s Handmaiden.” However, people whose lives she had touched through her ministry showed up to testify in her favor.

The couple eventually parted ways, and Smith became the first female and openly gay minister at the Kenilworth United Church of Christ in Buffalo, NY, where she served for five years. Smith then was called to serve as the first female and openly gay senior minister at the 325-year-old United Congregational Church in Bridgeport in 2009, where congregants were loving and accepting of Smith and her partner, Kim. There, she founded a nonprofit, food-centered charity—nOURish BRIDGEPORT, Inc. “We feed thousands of people every week, because you know, there are other issues besides being gay that are important,” Smith said. “And one of them is being hungry.

“I want you to remember, God made me who I am,” Smith told her audience. “God made you who you are. God loves me the way I am. God loves you the way you are.”