Date: December 5, 2024
The journey to LGBTQ+ inclusivity for VTS has been a long one. For those who enjoy our LGBTQ+ friendly environment, it is perhaps hard to imagine how difficult it was in the past. But, sadly, for many LGBTQ+ persons their experience at VTS was a difficult, painful, and often brutal experience. In October, in my capacity as Dean and President, I issued a formal apology to all former LGBTQ+ students who encountered discrimination and homophobia at the Seminary.
This process of confronting the wrongs in our past continues on Sunday night, when VTS acknowledges that we were wrong to prohibit the Rev. Canon Jerry Anderson from serving as a field education (now contextual ministry) supervisor. He was excluded because in 1981, he came out as a gay man at St. Patrick’s Church in Washington DC. He was then informed by VTS that he would not be allowed to supervise seminarians due to the Seminary’s policy that prevented “homosexuals from enrollment and holding teaching positions”.
Meanwhile, Jerry became a leader in AIDS ministry at a time when AIDS was being described in deeply homophobic ways, co-founding The Episcopal Caring Response to AIDS in the Diocese of Washington in 1986 and founding The Episcopal AIDS Ministry at Trinity Cathedral in Miami in 1996. He was also an advocate for LGBTQ+ inclusion.
On Sunday, at our Advent Service of Lessons and Carols, we honor Jerry with the highest award that the Seminary can confirm. We are giving him the Dean’s Cross for Servant Leadership. We are also acknowledging that VTS was wrong to exclude this gifted priest from the supervision of seminarians.
Do join me on this historic day.
The Very Rev. Ian S. Markham, Ph.D.
Dean and President of Virginia Theological Seminary and the President of The General Theological Seminary