The restoration to the ordained ministry service took place Oct. 26 at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church in Alexandria, Virginia, with West Virginia Bishop Matthew Cowden officiating.
The service was an ecumenical gathering and included members and leaders from around The Episcopal Church, including the Rt. Rev. Gene Robinson, the first openly gay bishop in The Episcopal Church, and the Very Rev. Ian Markham, dean and president of Virginia Theological Seminary.
Both Robinson and Markham spoke during the service, with Robinson acknowledging the importance of The Episcopal Church making an apology for its treatment of LGBTQ+ people and Markham offering an apology and repentance for the way Virginia Theological Seminary treated LGBTQ+ students in the past.
The service also included the Rev. Brian Hamilton, Pastor of Westminster Presbyterian Church in Washington, D.C., where Stock has served as a parish partner in recent years.
Stock spent his early years in the Roman Catholic Church, which his mother attended, and eventually found his way to Trinity Episcopal Church, Morgantown, home of West Virginia University, where Stock studied and later worked. He credits the Rev. John Glover, Trinity’s then-rector, and the Rt. Rev. Wilburn Campbell, then-bishop of the Diocese of West Virginia, as important figures in welcoming him as an Episcopalian and supporting his early formation for ministry.
While attending Trinity and working for WVU, he completed three years of study in the West Virginia School for Religion and discerned a call to the priesthood, entering Virginia Theological Seminary in 1975.
His time at Virginia Theological Seminary was often difficult. In a recent conversation, Stock reflected, “I’m amazed VTS never asked me to leave.” He was, to his knowledge, the first openly gay student at the seminary at a time when The Episcopal Church was often hostile to LGBTQ+ persons, and Integrity USA, the organization advocating for LGBTQ+ inclusion in The Episcopal Church, was still brand new.
The kindness of a few close seminary friends and then-Bishop of West Virginia, the Rt. Rev. Robert P. Atkinson, helped Stock make it through. After graduating from VTS in 1978, he stayed in Washington, D.C., working a secular job and serving as a lay assistant at St. Mary’s Episcopal Church in Foggy Bottom, where he had served as a seminarian.
On November 12, 1980, Bishop Atkinson ordained Stock as a deacon at St. Mary’s. On Oct. 27, 1981, he was ordained as a priest at St. John’s Episcopal Church in Charleston, West Virginia.
While Atkinson had long known that Stock was gay and did not determine that to be a barrier to ordination, he also knew no church in the Diocese of West Virginia would call a gay priest, so Stock continued his ministry in Washington, D.C.
For the next several years, he continued to face barriers to his ministry and could not find a welcome congregation in The Episcopal Church where he and his husband Mark Kristofik could make their home and where he could live out his priesthood.
Eventually they found a place where Stock could minister as his fully authentic self – Metropolitan Community Church of Washington, for which LGBTQ+ inclusion is central to its mission.
But at that time, ministering in the Metropolitan Community Church as an out gay man meant an end to his ordination in The Episcopal Church. On April 22, 1987, Atkinson removed Stock from the priesthood in The Episcopal Church.
While Stock was deprived of the right to exercise the gifts and spiritual authority in The Episcopal Church, The Episcopal Church was deprived of his pioneering ministry over the next several decades.
Stock went on to serve Metropolitan Community Church of Washington for 21 years, during which he founded Scrolls Revealed Ministries. He also traveled around the country leading a seminar, “Biblical Translation for Gay Liberation: How the Bible Does Not Condemn Homosexuality, An In-Depth Study.”
He also found himself pastoring to those dying of AIDS. He recalls, “When AIDS first hit, clergy wouldn’t go to the hospitals to visit the young men because there was a fear and no one knew what it was. I would get calls from nurses asking me to come visit AIDS patients. I would visit 10 to15 guys a day, running from hospital to hospital. I was averaging six or seven funerals a week, sometimes more than one a day.”
Stock credits his Clinical Pastoral Education work at Children’s Hospital in helping him with serve these patients. “I figured if I could deal with children dying, I could probably deal with anything in the church. That time there, dealing with those young children on the terminal ward, ministering and pastoring to their families, helped me face the AIDS crisis. It gave me the mental and spiritual equipment to face the AIDS crisis.”
After retiring from Metropolitan Community Church, Stock was ready to “just sit in the pews.” He and Kristofik found a home at Westminster Presbyterian Church in Washington, D.C. But soon enough, Westminster’s leadership learned of his ministry and asked him to share his gifts by becoming a “parish partner.” While he doesn’t offer sacramental ministry at Westminster, Stock has preached, assisted with pastoral counseling and led Christian education classes.
After all this time, Stock never imagined he would return to the denomination that had first ordained him. Yet, in 2023, after connecting with Cowden, the bishop felt called to correct this injustice.
Over the past year, the Diocese of West Virginia and Stock navigated the canonical process to restore him to the priesthood – a process requiring consent of the bishops in surrounding dioceses and approval from the regional disciplinary board.
Earlier this fall, the approvals were finalized, and St. Paul’s Episcopal Church in Alexandria, near where Stock and Kristofik live, was selected for the service. The rector, the Rev. Oran Warder, was also ordained out of the Diocese of West Virginia.
“We were not ready for Father Harry Stock 40 years ago and missed a great opportunity for his witness and leadership in The Episcopal Church,” Cowden said. “With the restoration of his orders, we offer some measure of healing and reclaiming his voice and his story among us.”
The Oct. 26 service not only restored Stock to the priesthood but also celebrated The Episcopal Church’s welcome of LGBTQ+ clergy and lay people. Reflecting on the past 43 years, from his ordination to this point, Stock summed up his journey.
“This isn’t just about me. This is a testimony that The Episcopal Church won’t put up with oppression of anyone based on their sexuality,” he said.