By Ann Scholl Boyer
The Rev. Catherine Quehl-Engel has heard it before. She knows, she knows. She doesn’t look like a minister, whatever that means.
With her fashionably short choppy haircut, her black chunky shoes, and olive khaki pants, she looks more like a college student than the chaplain at Cornell College. But when Catherine speaks, her words are full of what she’s learned about God, Christianity, a host of other faiths and spirituality.
To Catherine, who is ordained in the United Church of Christ, the ultimate compliment came after she spoke at graduation ceremonies last year. One of the graduates told her what a great sermon she gave. “The Unitarians and the Jews and the Evangelical Christians in my family, they all liked it,” the young man said.
Catherine, 33, speaks so she can be heard by a host of traditions. Many are students who have been turned off by the church for a variety of reasons. The fact that she doesn’t look like a stereotypical preacher helps, she says.
Catherine, who calls Monroe, Wis., her hometown, knew since she was a little girl that she wanted to be a minister. That dream garnered a lukewarm response from her pastor. He began talking about traditional jobs for women — teaching, nursing. Though he didn’t say she couldn’t be a minister, Catherine says it was more “what he didn’t say” that hurt.
It was her parents’ love, her mother’s faith and Catherine’s own love of God that ultimately shaped her faith and called her to the ministry. It also
brought about her pastoral emphasis on “hope in the midst of despair.”
As a teen, Catherine had moments of what she calls “faith wrestling.” She describes it as a “mixture of devotion, questioning, exploration and thirst after moral meaning.” While she was involved with her church and felt the call to ordained ministry, she also was confused. Some of her Christian friends called Jews “Christ killers.” For Catherine, it was her first encounter with Christianity “as a source of hate and shame.” Holocaust images of murdered Jews threw her into further confusion. She surfaced with a desire to learn more about Judaism, Christologies and scripture.
It was at Cornell as an undergraduate that Catherine felt she could openly question her faith. She listened as religion professor David Weddle asked, “Where is God in the midst of human suffering? Where is God when children are starving?”
Hearing Weddle wrangle with such questions gave Catherine permission to do so too.
She also points to the Bible, where Christ asks, “My God, Why have you forsaken me?” In her ministry, Catherine says she gives students “permission to be honest with God in the midst of our suffering, but, like Christ, to do so while declaring, ‘Into your hands I commit my spirit.’ ” Through questioning, she maintains people develop an even deeper faith.
Catherine took the post at Cornell in 1996. Among her duties, Catherine
offers weekly chapel services. Last February, she and the priest at the
Cedar Rapids Zen Center took a group of students on a retreat to help them learn the role of silence in their faith. The participants ranged from
fundamentalist Christians to atheists.
She has had students, alienated by the church, transfer their baggage on to her. She deals with people who make assumptions about Christianity. Some conservative Christians question why she extends her ministry to gays and lesbians.
At times, Catherine says she feels like like the Lone Ranger. It’s a feeling
she knows other college pastors share. “We work in the campus and the
church simultaneously. As a result, in the academic community, there are
some who hold us suspect because of our faith perspective and commitment,” she says. “Meanwhile, there are those in the church who have no comprehension that pastoring exists outside the parish model. That’s why at times it’s a lonely profession. At times, you feel misunderstood.”
Catherine, who is married and has a 4-year-old daughter, seeks support from other women clergy. They meet weekly to eat at a local bar. The dark corners give them the chance to talk privately about what they encounter. They bring their Bibles. They discuss sermons. They read scriptures. They talk. And they ask the question: How is your soul? It is the same question that Catherine asks, one-on-one, with students when she has the chance.
“The ministry of presence I offer, whether it be to a Christian or to an
atheist, is done out of Christian love. Even if I’m not using religious
language, it is God’s presence and Christ’s love that I extend.”
Reprinted with permission (c) 2000 The Gazette, Cedar Rapids, Iowa