Preaching God's word with an eye on national politics

Pepperell vicar leads liberal think tank

The Rev. Katherine Hancock Ragsdale at St. David Episcopal Church in Pepperell. (Jon Chase for the Boston Globe)

One day about six years ago, the Rev. Katherine Hancock Ragsdale was testifying before Congress on behalf of abortion rights, basking among politicians who were interested to hear her views and happy to shake her hand. The next day, the Episcopal priest was back for a meeting at St. David's, her tiny Pepperell church, where a 2-year-old scaled her chair to perch on her head.

Another who had just been feted in the halls of power might have rued a loss of dignity, but not Ragsdale.

"It really does help [you] from taking your own press too seriously," said the Arlington resident. She preaches the word of God while simultaneously plunging into the affairs of the world, blending the two and often drawing both praise and criticism at the same time.

When she appeared before Congress, Ragsdale was head of the national Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice. Today, the 50-year-old has a different job, as executive director of Somerville-based Political Research Associates, a liberal think tank that monitors the intellectual and religious right. She's still at St. David's, where she's been vicar 14 years.

The election of President Barack Obama will gin up her group's workload, Ragsdale predicts.

Conservatives will be honing their loyal-opposition arguments and mapping a return to power, arguing, " 'Look, we have a [black] president, there's therefore no need for affirmative action. There's no excuse for welfare; anybody can succeed,' " she said in a recent interview. Political Research Associates' mission will be to "anticipate those arguments . . . and prepare the progressive movement to respond to them."

The group, founded in Chicago in 1981 and in the Boston area since 1987, has initiated projects to monitor whether America's antiterrorist policies infringe on immigrants' and poor people's civil liberties, for example.

Other projects will investigate anti-Semitic and anti-Muslim sentiment on college campuses, and whether some religious conservatives might be trying to take advantage of disagreements within mainline churches - for example, over gay rights - to limit those churches' effectiveness, encouraging them to fight among themselves rather than against the religious right.

You'd expect Ragsdale to raise red-state hackles. She's a gay woman whose ordination some bishops in her church oppose, as well as a supporter of abortion rights who wears a priest's collar. But she also contends with a prejudice in her own camp.

"I've experienced far more resistance and discrimination in the progressive community for being a Christian than I do in the Christian community for being a lesbian," she said.

She recalled that three women, spying her collar, once tried to keep her out of a meeting room for the National Abortion Rights Action League - even though she was a member of the league's board.

"There seems to sometimes be a dogmatic response from the left to be stringently secular" because of the right's association with religion, said Supriya Pillai, chairwoman of Political Research Associates.

Pillai says she finds that view short-sighted, adding that Ragsdale "has a sharp sense of the ins and outs of the right, as well as the compromises needed on the left to safeguard as well as advance human rights."

Helen Alvaré is less impressed. An associate professor at George Mason University School of Law in Virginia, she used to work for the Secretariat of Pro-Life Activities of the US Conference of Catholic Bishops, and she attended various forums with Ragsdale over the years.

"I guess I find Dr. Ragsdale all about appearances and not at all about substance," Alvaré said in an e-mail. "Her method of promoting legal abortion is to appear at ease and friendly, and to say things like 'We do babies good' (referring to her church's affection for babies). . . . I think ultrasound and genetic sciences have progressed too far for her method of discussion of abortion to be considered 'reasonable.' "

But Ragsdale's parishioners love her, aside from a few who have left because of her politics, says Andrew Palmer, St. David's senior warden. "She has an uncanny ability to be able to take ancient scripture into contemporary life. . . . People [will] say to me, 'The only reason I come here is just to hear Katherine.' "

St. David's is a 45-minute drive from Ragsdale's home on Sundays. That stretches to an hour-and-a-half during the weekday rush. Her two worlds have intersected at times; a decade ago, during a spike in violence by extremist antiabortion groups, she'd reconnoiter her church in case a bomb had been planted.

"I hadn't had a threat, but it was just that kind of atmosphere," she said, adding she hasn't felt threatened since.

Raised in Virginia, Ragsdale has degrees from both Virginia Theological Seminary and Cambridge's Episcopal Divinity School. She says she felt the first tugs of ministry while an undergraduate at William and Mary, when the Episcopal youth group at the church she attended showed her how priests used writing, public speaking, and counseling people - things she loved - to "help advance God's stuff in the world."

But her ordination was not without a struggle. One bishop told her he was opposed to women priests. Another told her, 'I think you're a lesbian, and I don't ordain lesbians,' " she said.

Ragsdale had to go to Newark, N.J., where she was ordained by then-bishop John Shelby Spong, a progressive cleric and author.

Ragsdale sees her political activism heeding the Christian teaching of concern for the poor and marginalized.

She also sees a touch of Genesis in her work for gay rights; more than just a personal concern, she said, the issue recognizes "the glorious diversity and wonder of God's creation."

Though proudly progressive, she recalls finding common ground some years back with antiabortion Episcopal bishops. The issue was whether the church should endorse judicial by-pass, allowing minors who wanted an abortion to get a judge's approval in cases where they felt they couldn't discuss the matter with their parents.

Ragsdale argued that minors would be too intimidated by the courts but that she could support requiring another adult, trusted by the child, to approve any abortion. Despite their objection to abortion, conservative bishops, concerned about minors seeking unsafe, illegal abortions, agreed.

"As much as they were anti-choice, they also got the issue," said Ragsdale.

Rich Barlow can be reached at barlow81@gmail.com.