Richard Miller, M.Div.

My life after graduating from Yale Divinity School in 1964 is divided into two halves: twenty years as a married presumably heterosexual Christian minister and now twenty-four years since “coming out” as a gay person in ministry.  In the twenty years before my coming out as gay I was married to Page Putnam whom I met when she was also a student at the divinity school.  More recently, in 2013, I  married my German partner, Markus Lipfert. 

After my coming out as gay, I did gardening for a living in the Castro District of San Francisco, but in 1989, I was—as far as I have been able to determine—the first openly gay person to be called to be the pastor of a congregation of the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) by vote of the congregation when I was called to become pastor of the First Christian Church of San Jose, California.  The congregation also affirmed support for an agenda for full inclusion of GLBTQ people in the Disciples and ecumenically.

I served there and then subsequently as pastor of the Delhaven Christian Church in La Puente, California, before retiring and now live in Palm Springs, California.