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Marilyn Bowens
Raised in a fundamentalist home and church environment, Rev. Bowens initially sensed her call to ministry as a teenager, but then “life happened,” and her inability to reconcile what she had been taught about homosexuality with the possibility of being a minister deterred her from saying “yes” to her call. Instead, she pursued a Juris Doctorate degree from North Carolina Central University School of Law, and was licensed to practice law, in 1992. She earned her LL.M. degree from the University of Wisconsin (Madison) Law School in 1993. Her thesis, “The ‘Cleaver Paradigm’ as an Anachronism in a Multi-Cultural Society,” in which she argued for legal recognition of non-traditional families, was published in The Wisconsin Journal of Law, Gender, and Society (formerly, The Wisconsin Women’s Law Journal) in 1993. Rev. Bowens gave up her legal career to study at Duke Divinity School, and received her Master of Divinity degree in 2006. In January, 2008, she relocated to New Haven, CT, to serve the Metropolitan Community Church of New Haven as its Senior Pastor. She recently resigned that position in response to a call to a broader ministry, the precise definition of which remains a work of discernment still in progress. Rev. Bowens is dually-ordained clergy with the Metropolitan Community Church and The Fellowship of Affirming Ministries. She is the author of Ready to Answer: Why “Homophobic Church” is an Oxymoron.
Marilyn Bowens will be speaking at these events:
Healing the Trauma of Religion-Based Homophobia: Reflections of a Lesbian Christian Minister
