REV? DR? BETH LAROCCA-PITTS: CATHOLIC FAG HAG PAID A METHODIST ADMINISTER..?

  

"When I was 12 year old and a member of St. Joseph's 

Roman Catholic Church in Athens, 

I realized that I would never be happy in life if I had to do another job other than the job 

that 

the priest at St Joseph's did."

~(Rev. Dr. LaRocca-Pitts)~

Beth LaRocca-Pitts has been a member of the North Georgia Conference of the United Methodist Church since 1983, though she has been preaching for longer than that! "When I was 12 year old and a member of St. Joseph's Roman Catholic Church in Athens, I realized that I would never be happy in life if I had to do another job other than the job that the priest at St Joseph's did. So I started attending my mother's church, Athens First UMC and at age 14 I joined there. I also got a lay speaker's certificate at age 17 and began preaching around the district."

When it Was time for college, Beth decided on Duke University instead of the University of Georgia, where her father Joe had taught for nearly 40 years in the College of Pharmacy. She graduated in 1981 and then went to Garrett-Evangelical Theological Seminary in Evanston, Illinois. In 1983 she was ordained a deacon in the North Georgia Annual Conference, then in 1984 returned to take her first appointment at the Bishop Circuit in lower Oconee County. The circuit then included Bishop, Farmington, High Shoals, and Salem UMC's. In 1986 Beth was ordained an elder, and in 1984 she returned to school for her PhD at Harvard University. There she majored in Old Testament Studies through the Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations department. She also continued her archaeological research trips to Israel during these years, which she had begun as an undergraduate. All told, she has served on the staffs of four digs to date: Ein Nabratein, Sepphoris, Beth Shemesh, and Tel Ein Zippori.

At Harvard, Beth met her husband Mark, a native of Terre Haute, Indiana, a student at Harvard Divinity School, and a PhD candidate also in the Near Eastern languages department. Beth fell for Mark, in part, because he spoke Hebrew better than she did, having lived in Israel for three years after undergraduate school at Indiana University. Beth and Mark were married in 1991. In 1993, they returned to Athens where Beth was appointed to serve as an associate pastor at Athens First, and Mark worked at Athens Regional Medical Center as a patient representative. In 1996, Beth was hired by Duke Divinity School to teach Old Testament. Mark went to work at Duke Medical Center as a chaplain. While at Duke in 1998, they were blessed with the arrival of their twins, Joe and Ellie! In 2001, Mark was hired to be one of the staff chaplains at Athens Regional and the family moved back to Athens as soon as the Duke School year concluded in 2002. Beth was then appointed to serve Snellville UMC as associate pastor and served there two years and began teaching part time in the religion department at UGA.

Then, in 2004, the opportunity came for Beth to serve as senior pastor at Watkinsville First United Methodist Church, which is a scant 4 miles up the road from the church at Bishop where she began her ministry. She liked to tell people "I haven't come very far in 25 years!"

In June 2010, Beth and her family moved to Atlanta to be a part of Saint Mark. We are blessed to have them here.

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Faith & Religion: 

Breaking ground on LGBT faith

Founded: 1872

Began reaching out to LGBT people: 1991

Approximate membership: 1,862

Estimated LGBT membership: 90 percent

Saint Mark United Methodist Church is one of several prominent churches that line Peachtree Street — also the route of Atlanta’s Gay Pride parade. In 1991, the church’s members made a decision that might seem simple today, but forever altered the church’s course.

As the gay marchers came by, church members passed out slips of paper reading, “Everyone is welcome at Saint Mark.”

“In that the Baptists were hiring armed guards at the time, that simple message had a big impact,” said Senior Pastor Rev. Dr. Beth LaRocca-Pitts.

The next year, Saint Mark also passed out water to marchers — as they have continued to do ever since.

“We continue to do it because it changed our church’s life. We would have died as an aging congregation of fewer than 300 members if we had not been joined by the LGBT community,” LaRocca-Pitts said. “That parade saved us and opened up a whole new era of ministry and life here that we could not have imagined.”

Saint Mark’s membership is now mostly gay, and the church is now one of only three in North Georgia that are part of the Reconciling Ministries network. But while Saint Mark disagrees with the United Methodist Church’s stands against ordaining gay people who are in partnered relationships and denying marriage rites to gay couples, it has not chosen to join the handful of UMC clergy and congregations that have openly broken those rules.

In part, that’s because Saint Mark is one of the few UMC congregations with a majority LGBT membership, and leaders “choose our battles carefully” because they don’t want to risk the safe harbor they offer for LGBT worshippers.

For now, that means Saint Mark won’t host same-sex weddings and clergy can’t perform them. Instead, LaRocca-Pitts said, they can refer same-sex couples to other churches, and Saint Mark clergy may take a small role. They also offer “family blessing services” for those married elsewhere.

Change comes slowly, and Saint Mark doesn’t want the denomination to schism over LGBT inclusion.

“What we want is to convince our WHOLE church that God’s love and acceptance is available to all people,” LaRocca-Pitts said. “For this reason we go slowly —because we want the whole church to change.”

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