‘There’s room for all of us’

Virginia church’s 1st female pastor aims for inclusion

LYNCHBURG, Va. – For the first time in its 112-year-history, Quaker Memorial Presbyterian Church has a female pastor.

Anghaarad Teague Dees took over the helm last fall and was officially installed as pastor in a service in late March. She said there needs to be a place for people to be themselves and hopes the church will be that for Lynchburg.

“Anghaarad” – pronounced An-haread – is Welsh, meaning “the voice of angels.” Dees knows the name comes with some funny looks and exaggerated attempts at pronunciation.

Dees, 48, and her husband, Zane, have been married for 13 years and have two dogs and two cats. She said she occasionally does karaoke, enjoys getting outside, parades, antiquing, festivals, history, reading and movies.

Dees attended Mississippi University for Women and majored in vocal performance.

“I was a voice major on my way to doing opera and being a professional singer, but I don’t really have the ego for that work,” she said.

So, she went on to seminary at Austin Presbyterian Theological Seminary in Texas.

“And when I got there, it was like I had come home,” she said. “I loved my time in seminary, I loved the reading, I loved the work that I did when I was there. It was a great time.”

Growing up in First Presbyterian Church in Tupelo, Mississippi, there was a female pastor in the church from the time Dees was in elementary school.

“I never knew that women couldn’t be ministers,” she said. “I had seen a woman in the pulpit. I had seen a woman doing the work of ministry and I came from a family of really strong women.”

Dees’ father died when she was young. She described her mother as a phenomenal force who helped to raise her with the help of five great aunts who never married.

“It was like a movie of all these strong women raising more strong women,” she said. “So I just had this amazing experience and childhood of being surrounded by strong faithful women.”

She believes it’s OK for people to wrestle with their faith and have questions for God because he can handle all of it.

“I was raised that Scripture is this beautiful, authoritative witness of who

God is and God’s story with God’s people and that there’s room for all of us,” she said. “And so when I would butt up against fundamental attitudes, I’d be like, ‘No, God is great and good and loving and all are welcome.’ ”

Her class in seminary was the first

KENDALL WARNER/THE NEWS & ADVANCE VIA AP The Rev. Anghaarad Teague Dees says her new church, Quaker Memorial in Lynchburg, Va., reminds her of her hometown church in Tupelo, Miss.