Methodist Church gets first woman minister
By Samantha C. DePoy
Staff Writer

FARMINGTON – The Rev. Marriott Churchill remembers diving off a 20-foot high dive at age 2.

“It speaks about the way I move in life,” says Churchill, now 65, as she reflects on that daring toddler takeoff. “I take risks and follow the lead of the spirit, and the heart.”

Born in North Carolina but raised in Florida on the grounds of Ringling Brothers Circus where her parents worked, her father a photographer and her mother a painter both for the circus’ promotional materials, Churchill, the new minister at the Trinity United Methodist Church in Farmington, learned early about accepting and loving people of all backgrounds.

“My life was not an ordinary life. From very early on, I was surrounded by diversity.”

She also learned early that helping people was to be her life’s work, although with the constrictions of her gender at the time, Churchill admits she never thought as a youngster she’d go the way of leading the church.

“I felt called by God to help other people when I was 8 years old,” she remembers. “It was a real spiritual call. At the time, I didn’t really know what it meant. I figured it could be anything, even just helping someone across the street.”

In her teens, Churchill found herself a leader in the YWCA organization, went to college, hitchhiked around Europe in 1960 and then came home to find a job.

She landed in New York City where she was picked out of hundreds of young women from around the nation to work under the tutelage of Dr. Margaret Mead, the legendary anthropologist who’s research on society are still taught and respected today.

Churchill was thrilled to be hired for a two-year position as Mead’s personal assistant. She ended up working alongside the woman in various positions for 10 years. “She was truly remarkable,” Churchill remembers of the famous scholar she knew as a dear friend. “I connected with her because I expressed myself in some ways like she did.”

It was while working with Mead, a woman clearly ahead of her time, that Churchill realized she wanted to devote her life to religion, and subsequently, helping people.

So, she poured her passions into her studies, graduating from Duke University’s Divinity School, and began heading up congregations throughout the South, in areas where a woman reverend was unheard of. Churchill said once she had it set in her mind that the ministry was her life’s path, nothing could have deterred her, and nothing tried.

“I don’t think anything would have stopped me from doing what I wanted to do,” she admits with youthful gumption. “I have not felt there were any battles to fight about my gender.”

In 1983, she came to work at a church in Andover. That was 20 years ago, and she had no plans to leave. “It was a spiritual call to come to Maine and I took it and loved every minute of it. I loved the people, I loved the state and it was a good place to be, so I stayed.”

After Andover, she worked in Phillips, Newport and Fairfield, and as of July, accepted an appointment from the bishop of the New England Methodist Conference, also a woman, to lead TUMC and also the United Methodist Church in New Sharon. In addition, Churchill has been the chaplain at Franklin Memorial Hospital since 2000.

She lives in Farmington and has a retreat in Palmyra that she has dubbed, her “healing hut.”

She has two children and several grandchildren and great-grandchildren.

Not surprisingly, Churchill is the first woman to ever be the reverend at the TUMC. “I am who I am,” she notes, brushing off that tidbit and adding that she plans to stick around for a long while.

Community building

Her work and serving the people of her congregation is her life, says Churchill passionately. “It’s not something I put on every Sunday morning, this is the way I live. It’s like something I was born to do, it’s very natural for me.”

She also finds comfort in shopping, reading poetry and mysteries and listening to classical music.

As the world changes, coming to church each Sunday is way for people to have some routine in their life and see their neighbors, she says. Church is about community, both physical and spiritual, and Churchill sees her job as a way to bring community together.

“They know current events, they know their culture,” she says of her parishioners. And then reaching out to touch the Bible she says, “This is what they don’t know and so it’s my job to teach them. You’d think over 5,000 years, we’d have learned something but people still can’t live and love in communities. I’ve come here to love and to guide in the spiritual sense. I haven’t come here to teach them how to live my dream. I’ve come here to live their dream with them.”

sdepoy@sunjournal.com

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