Martha Juillerat

I was born in West Virginia, U.S. in the heart of the Appalachian Mountains. I was raised in Boston and Chicago, where I graduated from Northwestern University and McCormick Theological Seminary.  While still in university, I worked at a racial equality and community development project in Mississippi.

I was ordained by the Presbyterian Church USA to work in the field of domestic violence. For fifteen years I worked in women’s shelters and with projects focused on women’s equality and human rights, while also serving as an Interim Minister in small Presbyterian churches across northern Illinois and western Missouri. 

I met my partner, Tammy Lindahl, in 1986 while each of us was pastoring churches in southwest Missouri. Six years later we came out publicly,  at a time when LGBTQ+ ordination was still banned in the Presbyterian church. In due course, we lost our ordinations. 

At that point, my ministry shifted from “priest” to “prophet.” I spent the next twenty years working as an advocate for LGBTQ+ equality, most notably through the Shower of Stoles Project. Through that work I continued preaching at churches, universities, seminaries and denominational gatherings across the U.S. and Canada.

In 2005, just after same sex marriage was legalized across Canada, Tammy and I were married in Vancouver. Overwhelmed by the warm welcome we received here, we applied for Permanent Residence and moved to Canada in 2008. As a caseworker for a Member of Parliament, I worked primarily with immigrants, refugees and new citizens. Since retiring last year, I have continued to work with refugee projects.

I love to camp and hike. I played the double bass semi-professionally for 40 years, until arthritic hands got the better of me.

Despite all the great changes in my life over the years, three things remain constant: I’m  still a “mountaineer” at heart, I still retain my Calvinist roots, and like my Appalachian father and grandfather before me, I’m still an inveterate storyteller.