Rost says focus on social justice helped her decision to become All Souls pastor

A familiar liberal voice in the Colorado Springs religious community will soon speak from a new pulpit.

On Aug. 1, the Rev. Nori Rost will begin as pastor of All Souls Unitarian Universalist Church in Colorado Springs. For 12 years, Rost was senior pastor at Pikes Peak Metropolitan Community Church, a congregation of mostly gays and lesbians.

Rost, 45, said she took the All Souls job so she could bring her passions for social justice and world religions to a parish diverse in its faiths and beliefs.

"At All Souls, you could be sitting next to a Buddhist, who is next to a pagan, who is next to a Catholic, who is next to an atheist," she said.

Since completing her doctorate in 2007 from the Episcopal Divinity School in Cambridge, Mass., Rost said she has grown clearer in her pastoral vision, which is what led her to the Unitarian Universalist denomination.

"The more I studied Jesus and his teachings, the more I felt I could honor his life by being noncreedal and letting social justice be my doctrine," Rost said. "Jesus crossed socioeconomic lines. He crossed religious lines. He crossed gender lines. He leveled the playing field of who was acceptable and who was not."

Unitarian Universalist churches, of which there are more than 1,000 in the U.S., welcome people of any or no religious affiliation. A UU minister might preach from the Bible one Sunday, and from a Buddhist text, the Quran or a secular poem the next.

It seems a natural fit for Rost, who was born in Wheat Ridge and grew up in Topeka, Kan., in a nonreligious home, where she was raised by a single mother. When she was 16, Rost told her mother she was lesbian. She was kicked out of the house. Two years later, she joined the Air Force.

While stationed in Atwater, Calif., she attended the Metropolitan Community Church in nearby Modesto. The pastor's emphasis that God created and accepts the sexuality of gays and lesbians resonated with her, and she ended up at Iliff School of Theology in Denver. In 1994, she moved to Colorado Springs, where she was pastor at Pikes Peak MCC until 2005.

Rost became an outspoken critic of efforts to oppose gay rights and helped make Pikes Peak MCC a strong voice on gay rights issues, MCC staff members say.

But her biggest contribution was spiritual in nature, one former congregant said.

"She could take a passage from the Bible and apply it to our lives. She has an innate gift for that," said Colleen McElvogue.

During her pastorate, weekly attendance at MCC increased from 15 to 100 parishioners. But Rost says her biggest accomplishment at Pikes Peak MCC was "creating hope for numerous people who were toiling under the guilt impressed upon them by their former churches" because of their sexuality.

Rost left Pikes Peak MCC to start Just Spirit, an organization under the fiduciary umbrella of MCC that helps people understand and speak about social justice issues. But she soon yearned to return to the pulpit.

While studying for her doctorate, Rost talked with Unitarian Universalist pastors who were also in the program and she became interested in the faith's wide theological latitude.

By December 2007, Ross had transferred her MCC credentials to the UU church and applied to become minister at All Souls, which has an average weekly attendance of 175. On May 18, she was named pastor. Her first sermon is scheduled Sept. 7.

"This is a lady with lots of energy and with a theology that is broad and open enough that it fits the crosssection of our congregation," said Lew Phinney, co-chair of the All Souls ministerial search team.

Rost looks forward to preaching to a predominately heterosexual congregation with diverse social interests.

"At MCC, I would often preach from my gay experience," she said. "Changing that will be challenging and fun."

But she will continue to be an activist against those opposing gay rights.

"The only people Jesus railed against were the legalistic Pharisees, who were the religious right of his day - condemning others, excluding the ‘unclean' and practicing double standards, as in condemning Jesus for healing on the Sabbath," Rost said.

"I felt that if I focused my life on social justice and became a Unitarian Universalist," she said, "I would do Jesus proud."

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