Jen Callaghan: Embracing Change
08-01-2021
The year was 1969. Jen Christy Henry Callaghan was completing her first year at McCormick Theological Seminary when an event on the Lincoln Park campus forever changed how she would look at her relationship with the community around her.
On a Thursday afternoon in May 1969, McCormick’s new administrative building was taken over by a community activist organization. The Young Lords were protesting the death of an unarmed group member at the hands of a Chicago police officer as well as the need for organizations in the community – including McCormick – to hear the social, economic, and political concerns of the neighborhood they shared with a growing Latinx population. McCormick listened, working with organizations within the area on housing, legal aid, and other issues important to a community in transition.
“It was a time of controversy,” said Callaghan. “Students were asking themselves, where were we going to stand,” she remembered. “Do we stand with the seminary, or do we stand with the community…how would what we are being taught show up in our lives?”
That has been a guiding question for Callaghan throughout her life and career. Her answer? Her theological education would inform every aspect of her life.
“Faith calls us to care for those around us,” said Callaghan. “Each of us, whether we have a degree or certificate, are called to minister to the community around us…to be a sign of God’s love to others.”
Callaghan, whose father was a Presbyterian minister, grew up in Presbyterian congregations in Ohio, Michigan, and South Dakota. She calls herself “a dyed-in-the-wool Presbyterian.” After graduating from the College of Wooster in 1967, which was founded by Presbyterians, Callaghan went to work at Erie Neighborhood House, which can trace its beginnings to the Holland Presbyterian Church, today’s Third Presbyterian Church in Chicago.
After a year at Erie House, Callaghan felt called to the ministry of community-based social work; this was the career where she would live out her faith. While there, she also discovered that she could attend McCormick as part of the master’s program at the Jane Addams School of Social Work at the University of Illinois at Chicago.
Changing times
The 1960s were a time of political, cultural, and social change across the nation and McCormick’s environs were not exempt from the tensions and shifts that come with change. “At first,” Callaghan reflected, “it didn’t seem that the community’s influence was welcomed on campus. Their presence cracked us open, though. It forced us to not hold back on our involvement in the world while we were getting an academic education. We needed to be able to do both at the same time.”
Some McCormick students had been involved in the previous summer’s demonstrations at the Democratic National Convention, Callaghan noted. “Some of us didn’t feel that we should be closed in behind the iron fence,” she said, referring to the wrought-iron fence that had been built in the 1940s to lessen foot traffic across the campus to a shopping area. “We needed to be in the community more…we needed to see ourselves in the context of the world.”
In 1971, after graduating from McCormick and earning her master’s degree, Callaghan went out into the world. For three years, she and her husband, Howard Henry, who had earned a Certificate in Church and Community from McCormick in 1969, lived in London and Callaghan worked as a psychiatric social worker. “We traveled throughout the U.K., parts of Europe, Russia and spent a month in Kenya,” she recalled. “This period of working and traveling in a diverse and multicultural world was the beginning of my own slow journey toward a more authentic life.”
Coming home
Upon returning to the U.S., Callaghan was not only making career decisions, but also discerning where she would stand on issues that impacted the world, and more importantly, her own life and identity. “Over the course of the next few years, I recognized, accepted and became an active lesbian,” said Callaghan, “that was my true self. The love and support of Howard and our strong belief in God and community, held us up while we walked through that period. We remain good friends.”
Settling in Buffalo, New York, Callaghan worked for a child mental health agency where she co-founded the agency’s program for sexually abused children and was appointed the first director of Buffalo’s Child Advocacy Center. She also served as a consultant to the Western New York Children's Psychiatric Center, providing training to staff on the treatment of child sexual abuse, and assisting with investigations regarding allegations of abuse. With the state of New York, she conducted training workshops on the treatment of victims of abuse and was an expert witness for the courts. During the latter part of her career, she focused on helping individuals experiencing grief and loss through Hospice Buffalo and her private practice office.
In 1993, she met Mary Callaghan, a former nun and Vietnam veteran. When New York passed legislation that legalized same gender marriage in 2011, they married, one of the first same gender couples to wed in a Presbyterian church. Rev. Dr. Janie Adams Spahr, a leader for LGBTQ+ rights in the Presbyterian Church, co-officiated the service with Westminster Presbyterian Church’s former pastor, Rev. Tom Yorty. “Rev. Janie Spahr is a role model of courage,” said Callaghan. “A devout Presbyterian, she stayed within the church and worked to help it open its doors to everyone.”
Callaghan has been a long-time member of More Light Presbyterians, MLP, an organization working for the full participation of LGBTQIA+ people in society and in the life, ministry, and witness in the Presbyterian Church (USA). “For many years, when the formal church didn’t recognize the gender diversity of its members, MLP was my church through its online services, letters, and other forms of outreach,” she stated.
Reflecting on the 50 years since her graduation from McCormick, Callaghan wrapped up her McCormick experience in a single word. “What comes to mind when I think of McCormick is gratitude,” she said. “I was figuratively born on a Presbyterian church pew, but I wasn’t supposed to stay there. McCormick encouraged me to go into the world…share my knowledge…grow as a person…be my true self…and keep helping my community grow.”
“What comes to mind when I think of McCormick is gratitude,” said Jen Callaghan, a 50-year alumna. “I was figuratively born on a Presbyterian church pew, but I wasn’t supposed to stay there. McCormick encouraged me to go into the world…share my knowledge…grow as a person…be my true self…and keep helping my community grow.”
Callaghan will be one of the 50- and 25-year alumni who will be honored at this year’s McCormick Days, Thursday, October 14. Learn more about McCormick Days and register for the online event here.