It’s never too late to follow your spiritual calling
After coming out as a transgender woman more than two years ago, Vica Steel never dreamed of forging a path to church leadership. Until now.
“It’s Never Too Late” is a series from the New York Times that tells the stories of people who decide to pursue their dreams on their own terms. Read the article here which highlights Vica Steel, who is studying at Wartburg Theological Seminary, in Dubuque, Iowa, to become an ELCA pastor.
Ms. Steel and a stained glass window at the Wartburg Seminary Church in Dubuque, where she will start classes this fall.
Since Vica Steel was a child, she has dreamed of becoming a priest, of forging a path to church leadership. But she had abandoned that dream long ago. She felt out of sync with her Catholic upbringing. She felt out of sync with herself back then.
Clarity came to her two and a half years ago after Ms. Steel, a married elementary schoolteacher who lives in Madison, Wis., found herself experiencing such severe anxiety that she landed in the emergency room with what she thought was a heart attack. It was not.
Working with a counselor, she realized that for most of her life she had struggled with coming to terms with her identity. She came out as a transgender woman soon afterward. Her wife accepted her. Her family accepted her.
Ms. Steel said the urge to explore a new calling was already building. And though many of her school colleagues and students supported her, she said she felt backlash from some quarters in the school district, especially over her use of student-designated bathrooms. A spokesman for the Madison Metropolitan School District, Tim LeMonds, said the issue was Ms. Steel’s use of a student bathroom, not gender. Ms. Steel said that it was a common practice among faculty, adding that the adult bathrooms were too far away from her classroom.
Despite all of this, there was always one place dear to her that she believed would never accept her. Until now.
At 56, Ms. Steel retired in June from her career as a public-school teacher for nearly 24 years. This month, she began studying at Wartburg Theological Seminary, in Dubuque, Iowa, on a scholarship with the purpose of becoming a pastor in the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (or E.L.C.A.), a major denomination of the Lutheran church that allows L.G.B.T.Q. clergy members.