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Photograph by Dai Sugano
The Rev. Kristen Sundquist proves dreams come true for female priests
Mother or Father?
Divine hand moves local priest more than title
By Sandy Sims
'Call me Tina." (The children at St. Timothy's Episcopal Church in Mountain View used to call her "Father Tina.") "If you need to be formal," the petite, blonde woman with the clerical collar says, "call me Dr. Sundquist."
While close to 50 percent of the priests in the El Camino Diocese of the Episcopal Church are women, people still fumble over what to call them. Some like to be called "mother" and some "pastor."
"Most everyone around here calls me Tina," the Rev. Dr. Kristen Sundquist says of St. Andrew's Episcopal Church in Saratoga, where she is the assistant rector, music director and organist.
From the little girl who could play piano well enough to debut with the San Jose Symphony at age 12 to a woman ordained as a priest, she has been Tina--all because her second-grade teacher at Moorpark Elementary School in Campbell couldn't quite pronounce her Icelandic first name correctly.
The years since her birth at San Jose Hospital seem to have been orchestrated by the hand of the Almighty, preparing her for what was seemingly an impossible dream. And her position at St. Andrew's is simply a confluence of her own destiny and family history with what some might call a revolution in modern-day religion. No one could be more surprised that this has come about than Sundquist herself.
Sundquist has recently acquired another title: president of the board of the Council of Churches of Santa Clara County. The council is a powerful and perhaps the largest ecumenical, if sometimes controversial, organization in the valley, whose membership includes 100 churches and 32 different denominations.
Sundquist knew quite young that she wanted to be a priest. This was no airy fantasy wrought from books or teenage romanticism; instead, it was in her blood. She comes from a long line of Icelandic Lutheran bishops.
Her shift from the Lutheran to the Episcopalian church did, however, happen during her teens. Her father, William Erlendson, was a professor of music ("a fine one," says her friend Rabbi Daniel Pressman of Saratoga's Congregation Beth David) at San Jose State University, who, in fact, created the SJSU a cappella choir. He also directed the choir at Trinity Episcopal Cathedral in downtown San Jose.
Two things happened to Sundquist while her father was at Trinity. First, she learned to play the organ so she could accompany her father's choir. "When I began taking organ lessons, I left the piano behind, and I never looked back," Sundquist recalls. She also listened to the sermons there and "fell in love with the Episcopal idea of the 'beauty of holiness.' "
In the same way she moved on from the piano, she left the Lutheran church behind and became Episcopalian. Her parents accepted her change in denomination without rancor. After all, Sundquist explains, "you don't mess with a teenager who loves to go to church."
This was before churches became consumer products--back when churches drew distinct denominational lines, when families stayed in the same denomination for generations, when churches even had ethnic loyalties. It was a time when Catholic priests denounced Protestantism from the pulpit and Protestants called Catholics pejorative names like "mackerel snapper" and "pope-sickle," and Christians thought Jews needed to be converted to Christianity.
Still, Christianity was central to American culture. In the 1940s and '50s, schools gave students release time from the classroom for religious studies. In Santa Clara County, the Catholic church used its well-honed catechism program for Catholic students, and in 1942, Protestant churches in Santa Clara County got together to create a body of teachers to instruct the Protestant students. This new ecumenical organization was called the Council of Churches of Santa Clara County.
Times have changed.
"Since World War II, there's been a whole interfaith revolution," Rabbi Pressman says. He explains that first the Catholics and Protestants broke down barriers, and then the barriers between them and the Jews broke down. "Christians have forsworn attempts to convert the Jews, so we can all relax," he explains. "We all tolerate different paths to one God. It doesn't mean we all agree. We can just let the other be."
Although she originally learned to play the piano, once Sundquist learned to play the organ, it was as if it had been pre-ordained.
Photograph by Dai Sugano
Now the Council of Churches has elected a woman Episcopal priest--Sundquist--as president of the board and a Roman Catholic priest--the Rev. Jose Rubio--as vice president. While the council doesn't have a formal tie with non-Christian religious bodies, it does have a strong interfaith dialogue and works closely with Jewish, Buddhist, Muslim and Sikh groups, says the Rev. Vaughn Beckman, executive director of the Council of Churches. The council retains its Christian defining statement that Jesus Christ is divine lord and savior, which is why the other religious bodies aren't members.
Certainly a major evolution in the church has been the ordaining of women priests.
When Sundquist became Episcopalian as a teen, she was aware of her desire to become a priest, but at that time priests had to be men. So she put the idea away for what she thought was forever and poured herself into her music. She was very good at it, receiving a Ph.D. in music from Stanford and going on to teach music at Mills College for 16 years.
When Sundquist's father died, Trinity Episcopal Cathedral gave her new titles--music director and choir director. Unbeknownst to Sundquist, this position was nudging her along the path to becoming a priest.
"When you have a choir, you have a congregation," Sundquist says. "You have to understand and interpret the music and then convey that to the choir, so they sing it right for the congregation. It's a kind of lay ministry," she explains.
In 1976 the Episcopal church ordained its first woman priest.
"It divided some congregations," Sund-quist recalls. For example, during the Eucharist (communion), some parishioners would only go to the side of the alter where the Father was, to avoid the female priest.
"Our diocese [El Camino Diocese stretches from Palo Alto to Atascadero] has been supportive of women since the beginning, and around 50 percent of the priests are women now," Sundquist says. Although there are no woman bishops in California, there are some along the Eastern seaboard.
"I wasn't ready in 1976," recalls Sund-quist. "I still felt in [my heart] priests were supposed to be men." However, fate nudged her a little further when Trinity Episcopal Cathedral gave her a bigger title, director of religious training.
"I took a leave of absence from Mills and never returned," she recalls.
At Trinity, Sundquist began to try on the idea of becoming a priest.
"This isn't a decision you make alone," she says, explaining that the church makes it too. A committee reviews one's potential as a priest and makes its own recommendation. In the early 1980s, with the church's blessing, Sundquist enrolled in the Church of Divinity School of the Pacific in Berkeley. She recalls that when she told her husband, Hal, that she had decided to go to divinity school, he said, "It's about time."
In 1988 Sundquist was ordained a priest.
She served first as an associate rector at St. Timothy's Episcopal Church in Mountain View, and for the last seven years, she's been at St. Andrews and also began serving on the board of the Council of Churches. Now she's at the helm of the council's board.
"The council is very important," the Rev. Art Domingue of the First Congregational Church of San Jose explains, "because it gives churches a united voice to speak to what's going on today, to make sure there is some pressure for things like lower-income housing and help for the homeless."
In fact, the council was directly responsible recently for getting $25 million allocated by the city for affordable housing for those whose income is 30 percent below the median income.
According to Beckman, the council has started some 50 social programs in Santa Clara County. Recently, they launched a program to help people get off welfare and into jobs. Their new program designed to help youth become successful has the support of the police chief and mayor of San Jose, the YMCA and others. The council has joined efforts with InnVision--a non-profit organization dedicated to eliminating homelessness--in setting up a rotating shelter for the homeless.
Photograph by Dai Sugano
In addition to cooking up sermons and music, Tina Sundquist also does some fancy cooking in her kitchen.
The Council of Churches has been dubbed a liberal organization by some because of its social advocacy. It supported the Farm Workers during César Chávez times. "We were instrumental in focusing that program as justice based on spiritual principles, not on politics," Beckman explains. The council also has a strong group of gay-affirming churches among its membership. "In 1976," Beckman recalls, "we were the first ecumenical organization to accept a gay church into the fold." Beckman says he is the only gay executive director of a council of churches in the United States.
Beckman is pleased about Sundquist taking over as president. "She is organized and gets things done," he explains. "She wants to reach out to diverse religions, and she wants to be inclusive and appeal to Evangelical and Orthodox churches [that typically do not join the council]."
"Understanding is 90 percent of accepting," says Sundquist, who believes deeply in the baptismal covenant, which is to strive for justice, peace and respect and the dignity of every human being. "The council stands for that," she says.
"Tina has people skills," Ann Marie Burger, treasurer at St. Andrews and former mayor of Saratoga, says. "She connects immediately with people and she's a shrewd businesswoman."
Sundquist has found another people connection and another title while at St. Andrews--cancer survivor. She says that when she first got the news, she was a wreck. "I suddenly didn't know what to pray for. Here I was a priest, and I didn't know what to pray for," she recalls. "I decided to pray 'help me get through this.' " She remembers, "I actually felt a weight lift off my shoulders. I became calm, and I knew I would be okay no matter what happened."
She says the only other time she felt the hand of God that directly was when she was ordained. "We believe in the apostolic succession," she explains, which is the unbroken succession of laying on of hands: Christ laid his hands on his 12 disciples, and they in turn laid their hands on disciples, and so on. This laying on of hands is supposed to be an unbroken chain to this day. When a person is ordained, the bishop lays his or her hands on the head of the new priest as part of this chain. "When the bishop laid his hands on my head, I felt something come over me. I was shivery," she recalls.
While the intensity of that experience has worn off, Sundquist says, "When I put on my clerical collar, I remember who I'm working for."
"I couldn't have a more perfect job. I serve God, and I get to play the largest pipe organ in the valley," she adds.
Domingue recalls Sundquist coming to the First Congregational Church of San Jose more than 20 years ago to borrow their organ for practice. "I've been watching from afar as this talented and capable woman has worked her way into becoming a priest, and I'm delighted." He adds that she is really really good on the organ.
In fact, the music at St. Andrews is also really really good. Ray Renwick Jr., warden at St. Andrews, says, "After church, people hang out inside the sanctuary till she's done, just to listen to her play." The choir, which happens to be directed by Sundquist's husband, Hal, a music and computer science teacher at Abbot Middle School in Mountain View, is so good that they perform with the San Jose Symphony.
Sundquist not only serves up music and sermons at St. Andrews; she also serves up food at home, as she is passionate about cooking. "I love to have people over and devise the menu," says Sundquist, who owns 40 cookbooks. Among other things, she enjoys Icelandic pancakes and Middle Eastern food, and even makes her own pasta.
"What I like most about her, though," Renwick says, "is that she is so natural. She is just Tina."
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Saratoga, California Since 1955
