Rev. 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 Intentional 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. I spent the next twenty years
working as an advocate for LGBTQ+ equality, most notably as the founding
Director of 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 for
14 years, I worked primarily with immigrants, refugees and new citizens.
After retiring, I began preaching, administrative and program development
work at Esquimalt United Church in December, 2023. Through an act of
gracious reconciliation, the Presbyterian Church reinstated my ordination in
2025, clearing the way for me to be appointed as a Minister at Esquimalt
United Church.