Movement Magazine: Issue 160

INTERVIEW
REVD DR ELLEN
MARIE BARRETT
The Revd Dr Ellen Marie Barrett (Sister Helena, OSB) is an Associate Priest at St Mary’s Scottish Episcopal
Cathedral in Glasgow and co-founder of the religious community The Companions of Our Lady and St
Mungo in the Diocese of Glasgow and Galloway. She is a retired editor and professor of History, and former
lecturer in Episcopal Church (USA) history, liturgy, and canon law as well as a sometime actor, cleaner,
proof-reader, archivist, and the world’s worst stockbroker trainee.
Firstly, can you tell us a little about yourself and your
journey of faith?
My own spiritual journey has often been like following a
mountain path in fog and I’ve been known to get pretty
stroppy with God, though I’ve never made the mistake
of equating God with the Church. The presence of Christ
in the Eucharist and the Gospel message of unbounded
love for all have been the keys to my vocation and my
commitment to struggle for justice.
I wanted to be a nun even before I knew there were Anglican
nuns, but that’s a different and much later story, fraught
with its own difficulties. In 1972, three people in just one
day asked me if I’d ever thought about being ordained. The
Trinity has a sense of humour - it took me three tries to be
accepted for ordination as a Deacon in 1975, and it was
still not easy after the rules changed to admit women to
the priesthood, but I was the 42nd woman ordained priest
in the Episcopal Church.
In 1977 you were the first out lesbian to be ordained
in the entire Anglican Communion. Can you describe
how your vocation to the priesthood was formed?
By a combination of devotion to Christ present in the
Eucharist, and a desire to see inclusion and justice prevail.
The justice and inclusion thought was first ignited by my
seeing a ragged little girl my own age (about 6) come
begging at our gate in Quito, Ecuador with an older, worn
down and desolate man. It was one of those ‘why is she
so hungry and hasn’t got good clothes and a house like
mine?’ moments.
The Eucharistic focus came a bit later, and I remember
asking my mother why there were no women at the altar
even before I knew what was happening up there. I never
fully accepted her answer when she said that we just don’t
have women ministers.
What have been the highs and lows of that priesthood
since you were ordained?
The joys are manifold and mostly everyday things like
baptisms, saying Mass, and sitting with people in their
joys and sorrows. There was the ordination of one of my
former students and the public recognition of her partner
as her family in the service. Two deathbeds stick in my
heart as being moments not only of sorrow but a deep
grace, and even a bit of accidental humour. Other highs
were my ordaining Bishop, Paul Moore Jr of New York, who
was then retired, taking the train to the parish where I was
serving to help celebrate my Silver Jubilee as a priest the
year before he died. Alan Wilson, Bishop of Buckingham
and outspokenly in favour of equal marriage, came and
preached, albeit with delicate circumspection, at my 40th
anniversary celebration at our parish on his patch, and the
multitude of greetings on that occasion from all sorts of
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