Rev. Clare Hickman Oatney '89

An Episcopal priest, she has been assistant rector of Christ Episcopal Church in Dearborn, Mich., for seven years.

How did you happen to become a clergyperson?

I was raised an Episcopalian and had been very active, but I fell away from the church of my childhood as I studied "what really happened" and started to ask lots of hard questions about Christianity. In my freshman seminar, someone suggested, "Don't take classes, take professors." One they said I should take was Cal Roetzel, so I ended up in Bible studies and just fell in love with it. I wanted to keep studying, so I went off to Harvard Divinity School, which took an almost exclusively academic approach to religion. I found it very uncomfortable how anti-religion they were in many ways.

[Then I had] a conversion experience, a bolt from the blue, an experience of the presence of God that had been unparalleled in my life. I can only describe what happened as a gift of knowledge that no matter how much humans have mucked about with it, nonetheless, God was present in Christianity. All religions have the weird and wacky mixed in--that's why none of them is a perfect revelation of God--but God is still present.

What is the role of the clergy in the 21st century?

In so many ways, it's the same as always because human need is the same. A model of the priesthood says, "I'll go, too. I'll walk with you through your pain, in your joy." We're there in those moments of sickness, of fear, when people are dying, when they're grieving, when children are born. We are invited into sacred moments. At our best, when this does not turn into some weird ego thing, we are a sign that God is always there as well.

What is the proper role of religion in public life?

As a member of the Episcopal church [the U.S. branch of the Anglican Communion], I stand in a tradition that's really conscious that we are post-Empire. We're still untangling the mindset that the best place for the church is to be in a power position because then we'll have the most influence. It's always dangerous to get into bed with those who are in power because we need to be able to speak truth to those who might be oppressing those without power.

I don't think it's our job to speak for one candidate or another, and not just because the IRS would take away our tax-exempt status, but we can speak to issues; that is our task. We consider the center of the Gospel to be concern for the powerless and the outcast, for the feeding of the hungry, the clothing of the naked, the care for those in prison, those values that are over and over again in the Gospel and in the Hebrew scriptures. The balance we need to have is one of conviction and humility.

How do you square your own faith and values with your responsibilities as a citizen?

In this last election I worked with MoveOn [a grassroots organization addressing a variety of issues] as a precinct leader. I was very aware of the need to be careful. I didn't want to use my pastoral relationship to sway people in one way or another. The only ones who knew were people who were very close to me.

There was a ballot proposal in Michigan, one of those one man/one woman [marriage] amendments to the state constitution. A clergy friend took out a signature ad [against it] in the newspaper. I did put my name to that as "The Rev.," so obviously there are times I'm willing to take that stand, especially on issues I've been very clear about with the parish. That discussion had been framed as the religious voice [being] the one that is speaking for those sorts of amendments, so it felt important to speak against it as a religious voice.

There is not a particularly loud public voice for the religious left. That's one of the things we get from raising people in an adult faith where we're not going to give you the answers. We can't speak out publicly with the same kind of freedom that you would in a tradition that has a single answer.

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