Tucson's Catalina UMC welcomes first openly queer, married pastor

Catalina United Methodist Church is welcoming its first openly queer, married pastor. Rev. Kelli Knight will be starting her service as the church's associate pastor on Monday, July 1.

She last served in a church in Chicago before making the move to Tucson last month.

"I grew up in the Catholic church and I loved the ritual, the communities and the stories that we learned in the church. I used to be an altar girl," Knight said. "My dad was in the military so we moved around a lot and what was consistent for me was the church. I attended St. Catherine University and I thought of maybe joining. But I discerned a call to family life at that time."

However, after graduation, she became a faith-based community organizer in Chicago, working with local churches to coordinate community services.

"I worked with churches on a whole bunch of social justice issues for the common good," Knight said. "We worked on things like getting driver's licenses for immigrants and we worked on unaffordable housing. My job was to pull together churches to actively support that."

In Chicago, she became a labor organizer for a union supported by the Lutheran church involved in gathering support for patients and healthcare professionals.

"That was my first exposure to clergywomen," Knight said. "It was in Chicago where I first saw a clergywoman and I got interested in their stories and their work and I thought, you know, maybe I can do this."

At the time, Knight was faced with a struggle of wanting to follow the call and her own faith.

"I was still really Catholic at the time, and I knew that if I stayed in the Catholic Church, I'd just be fighting to be recognized versus actually just doing the ministry and I just wanted to do the ministry. I felt called to leadership in the church," Knight said. "My friend at the union was like 'what about Methodist?' I had no idea what a Methodist was."

She said that because of her community organizing background, she wanted to serve in a denomination that had influence.

"All of our former presidents were Methodist until John Kennedy," Knight said. "So, I went up to the Methodist seminary in Chicago. I entered as a Catholic because I didn't know, I thought I was gonna remain Catholic."

During the seminary, Knight learned about John Wesley, the founder of the Methodist Church. She was inspired by his ability to connect religion and service to the community.

"He really took the church out to the streets," Knight said.

After the seminary, Knight started on her path in the Methodist church. She served in campus ministry for six years. Everything changed in 2019 as the United Methodist General Conference took place.

"In 2019, the Global Methodist Church came together — the fundamentalists in the Methodist Church had kinda taken over and started to actively punish queer clergy and clergy who were doing same-sex weddings, and I thought about leaving in 2019," Knight said. "But I thought I should stay to shepherd my church through that and then the pandemic came, so I had to stay there."

There were cases in churches where people would submit complaints or bring queer clergy to trial, which meant those clergy members were at risk — and in some cases, were defrocked, being formally removed from their posts in a church and unable to serve as a pastor anymore.

"I was worried of what if that were to happen to me," Knight said.

In 2020, she married her wife, Myah. Knight left pastoral work in 2022 and worked in healthcare consulting and didn't think she'd return to the clergy.

"But I missed it. I missed the community and having direct impact," Knight said. "Then, in 2019, Catalina became reconciling and expressly began welcoming all people, especially queer people."

When the time came for her to return, she reached out to Bishop Carlo Rapanut of UMC's Desert Southwest Conference and the post at Catalina was becoming available. Knight was looking at living in Arizona because she wanted to be close to family.

The conference, which has member churches across Arizona and in Southern Nevada, calls itself a "diverse and loving organization with open doors to a variety of people and partners in ministry." Rev. Matt Colby is retiring from a post as assistant pastor at Catalina church as Knight begins her work there.

"I thought if this was meant to happen, then God would make the way for me," Knight said. "And now I'm here."

Knight's relationship with her sexuality wasn't typical in comparison to other's experiences.

"I identified as straight until I fell in love with Maya, my wife. I don't remember sermons against homosexuality in the Catholic church," Knight said. "And the church I served at the Holy Covenant church. And it was supportive. It was a safe church and queer people weren't only accepted, they were celebrated."

Knight said she is excited to begin serving at Catalina, 2700 E. Speedway, and help "heal folks in the church."

"I think there is a spiritual hunger. We're in a pandemic of loneliness," Knight said. "But this is the Beloved Kingdom, and it includes everybody."