Andrena 'set free' ELCA candidate for ordination lives with faith and HIV Preparing for ordained ministry in the ELCA is filled with uncertainties—uncertainties about God’s direction, seminary classes, church structures, congregational acceptance and more. A 40-something, African American, single mother of three can expect to encounter even more uncertainties in a 4.85 million-member church that is about 97 percent white.
“A lot of people in my community were dying from the virus. ... I was nervous about it, but I went ahead and I got tested,” Ingram said. “When I received my diagnosis, I was devastated. ... I felt ugly. I felt like damaged goods. “I believed people would shun me. ... I remembered Cheryl, a woman in the neighborhood who was rumored to have AIDS. I [had] looked down on her and made all kinds of judgments about her character. And now, that woman was me. “Because I saw so many people in my community getting sick and wasting away, I believed that would happen to me also. I was depressed, and it was only because of my children that I made an appointment at a clinic—[outside] my neighborhood, of course—and began to get treated. My doctor also recommended that I see a therapist for my depression. I stopped working and fell into a dark hole that I didn’t think I would be able to come out of.” When she heard about the church down the block, Ingram put her youngest son in its summer program so she could “be miserable during the day without him watching me in that condition.” At the end of the program at Transfiguration Lutheran Church, South Bronx, N.Y., parents were asked to enroll their children in the after-school project, seek baptism for their children or become members. “I signed up to have my son baptized and forgot about it,” Ingram said. A few days later, the congregation’s pastor, Heidi B. Neumark, and intern Andrea L. Walker were standing at Ingram’s door. That they’d take time to visit “completely blew my mind,” she said. Ingram told them about all she was going through. The women invited her to bring her son to Sunday school. “I didn’t think God loved me because I had been away from God for so long,” she said. “I feared being looked at by others and being judged by them also. But I went. I took my son to Sunday school and started attending church. “None of the stuff happened that I thought would happen. No one looked at me funny. No one moved over in the pew. Everyone hugged me. And I heard that Jesus loved me.” Ingram heard a story from Luke 13:11-13: “And just then there appeared a woman with a spirit that had crippled her for 18 years. She was bent over and was quite unable to stand up straight. When Jesus saw her, he called her over and said, ‘Woman, you are set free from your ailment.’ When he laid his hands on her, immediately she stood up straight and began praising God.” “That was a story about me,” Ingram said. Neumark invited Ingram to read Bible lessons in church and to teach Sunday school. Whenever Ingram said she couldn’t do something, Neumark convinced her she could. “Just as Jesus told that woman who was bent over, ‘You are set free from your ailment,’ he said that to me. ... It wasn’t the physical ailment that had me bent over but the emotional ailment, the spiritual ailment,” Ingram said. “Slowly I began to look at myself and having the virus differently because I realized Jesus loved me just the way I am—with all of my imperfections, with all of my sinfulness. ... I began to embrace my HIV status. ... It’s not the total me, but a part of who I am.” One day Neumark asked her to think about going to seminary. “I said, ‘Well, I don’t know.’ She said, ‘Yes, you can do that,’ ” Ingram said. Becoming an ordained minister Ingram applied to become a candidate for ordained ministry through the Metropolitan New York Synod. Her entrance interview with the candidacy committee included a review of her psychological evaluation. The interview ended abruptly with a question: “What if we sent you to seminary and you developed AIDS dementia?” “I was kind of shocked when I heard those words,” Ingram said. She didn’t have a response other than “Thank you for your time.” The following year, Ingram applied again. When the same question came up, she responded: “What if you got hit by a bus when you left the building?” She explained, “When people tell me ‘No, you can’t,’ God tells me ‘Yes, you can,’ and I do.” Ingram entered the Lutheran Seminary at Philadelphia as part of the ELCA Theological Education for Emerging Ministries program, an alternate path to ordination that doesn’t require a master of divinity degree. But during her second year in the program, she decided to earn the master’s degree. “I felt I needed everything the seminary had to offer in order to deal with the stigma that is attached to my age, my gender, my culture and my illness,” she said. Ingram heard rumors that some people wondered whether HIV could spread through her use of silverware in the seminary cafeteria. “It would’ve been a perfect opportunity to educate,” she said. “I find that I do a lot of educating on the side. I speak freely about what has gotten me this far. I speak about the human condition. That goes much deeper than the virus or AIDS. I speak to the emptiness, the self-centeredness, the judgments we make on others ... the brokenness of humankind ... the healing power of Jesus [and] of being empowered to stand up and proclaim the gospel.” Fellow student JoEllen Morrison remembered a presentation Ingram made to the seminary community. “Andrena said if one member of the body of Christ has HIV and AIDS, then the whole body has HIV and AIDS,” she said. “Andrena gave me a whole new way [of] thinking about the body of Christ.” Morrison remembered how, after a school trip to Africa, Ingram celebrated her birthday with a silent auction so women with AIDS in South Africa could build a kitchen. Ingram completed a year of internship at St. John Lutheran Church, Melrose Park, Pa. This December she’ll complete her academics and seek a call from a congregation in the Southeastern Pennsylvania Synod. “Andrena Ingram is a wonderful example of the depth of talent and giftedness available to the church when it takes seriously its [mission] to build the church in communities of poverty and among those who understand in their soul the power of transformed lives,” said Stephen P. Bouman, bishop of the Metropolitan New York Synod. “Andrena is a leader, a gifted theologian and Scripture scholar, and she is going to be a powerful pastor.” Philip D.W. Krey, president of Philadelphia Seminary, added that Andrena “participated in every aspect of our academic, spiritual and communal life. ... We have grown and learned together.” Standing up publicly In August, Ingram participated in the International AIDS Conference in Toronto and its interreligious pre-conferences (October 2006, "Hanson: Situation calls for courage"). There, Mark S. Hanson, ELCA presiding bishop and Lutheran World Federation president, asked religious leaders to take HIV tests and publicly disclose the results. “[This] will give courage to other religious leaders and also their communities to then follow, which begins to break the silence and the stigma too often associated in religious communities with HIV and AIDS,” he said. Ingram felt inspired by Hanson’s words. “As a religious leader stepping forward to put a face to HIV, I’m aware of some of the risks in doing so. But there is a larger risk,” she said. “It’s the risk that people take every day in having unprotected sex. It’s the risk of someone feeling the stigma ... the discrimination of [having] HIV or AIDS.” People living with HIV and AIDS should be able to find “sanctuary, a shelter from the storms of life” at church, she added. “People won’t go and get tested if they feel that they are going to be rejected,” Ingram said. “We can do something about minimizing the spread of [HIV and AIDS]. We can erase the stigma and discrimination. We can love one another, and we can be the community that we are called to be—the body of Christ. ... I hope to be a bridge between the community [of people living with HIV and AIDS] and the church. “This is nothing new for me. I have faced many challenges in my life. Worrying about how people will accept me and being nervous about the call process gives power to the feelings that would bend me over again. I would be fooling myself if I didn’t think about it periodically, but my faith will keep me standing up.” |
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