Born in Canby, Minnesota in September of 1957, Rev. Phyllis Zillhart recalls belonging to a thriving Lutheran church whose members came both from the town of approximately 2,000 inhabitants and the surrounding farming community. Young Phyllis’s paternal family attended church on holidays and special occasions. In contrast, her maternal family helped found the Lutheran church their nearby community and incorporated God into their daily lives with devotions at the breakfast table and prayer incorporated in their daily lives.
To Phyllis, church served as a haven from a chaotic home life. The church also provided personal validation for her leadership qualities and piano skills. She felt her pastor calling at quite a young age. A Vacation Bible School teacher asked the children what they wanted to be when they grew up, and six-year-old Phyllis replied, “A pastor.” The teacher remarked, “Well girls can’t be pastors, but you could be a parish secretary. That’s almost the same.” But, Phyllis persisted. She graduated from Augustana College in 1979 before enrolling at Luther Seminary.
On her sexuality, Rev. Zillhart now says, “I can look back and see signs that there was something going on early in my life where I didn’t feel the attraction to boys.” But, in her limited social circle in Canby, no role models existed for a life outside of housewife and motherhood. She knew she didn’t want that. She recalls that in college, “I had these wild crushes on women in college, but again didn’t think much of it.” Dating men never felt comfortable. But it was not until she was already in seminary that Zillhart began to own her sexuality.
At the time, ordination in the ELCA required gay and lesbian clergy to commit to a life of celibacy. “It just became this the dilemma where you had to figure out what would you choose? Would you choose your sexuality, or would you choose your spirituality? And who are you as a person and what’s basic to who you are? And just intrinsic to who you are? I couldn’t answer because obviously both are intrinsic to who we are in the mystery of our personhood.”
While in seminary, Zillhart formed friendship with Ruth Frost. Over a couple of years, their relationship developed into a romantic one. Because of the ELCA rules, and general homophobia at Luther Seminary, Zillhart remained closeted. She also came to realize that her sexuality was an important part of her identity. She explains, “But I also just knew that this was true to who we were, and I just felt like in the Wizard of Oz when you open the door and suddenly it’s not sepia anymore. It’s in color and you didn’t even realize that, ‘Oh I was living in a sepia world. I wasn’t fully embodied. I wasn’t being fully true to myself.’”
Ultimately, Zillhart found remaining closeted untenable, and came out to her bishop, Bishop Lowell Erdahl. Bishop Erdalh’s personal views on homosexuality were still evolving, but in any case, his hands were tied. He removed her from the ELCA’s roster of clergy. Years later, in 2000 Bishop Erdahl would apologize. Rev. Zillhart recounts, “And he just he gave me a personal apology. And he said, ‘I’m so sorry.’ He said, ‘I just, at that time, I just was not ready.’ And I said, ‘Oh, I totally understand. We all needed the process. We all needed to walk the journey.’ And he just gave me this big hug. And, it was very healing.”
In the meantime, Zillhart found herself in need of a new career direction. She worked temporary jobs while trying to figure out whether to go back to school or change denominations. And then came an invitation in the mail. St. Francis Lutheran Church in San Francisco actively sought a lesbian pastor to serve its diverse community. Zillhart and Frost had the qualifications required, and they applied as a couple. St. Francis Lutheran called them both.
The two women, along with Rev. Jeff Johnson who had been called by First United Lutheran Church, were “extraordinarily ordained” in a ceremony attended by over a thousand people in January of 1990. The ELCA suspended both congregations and then expelled them in 1995. However, their ordination served as model for other congregations and LGBTQ+ pastors. Another 15 such ordinations followed over the next 19 years.
During the 1980s and 1990s, San Francisco was the cultural center of the United States’ gay community, and therefore the epicenter of the AIDS epidemic. In 1994, AIDS became the leading cause of death among all Americans aged 25-44. [3] St. Francis Lutheran served as a refuge for both dying men and their grieving families. Rev. Zillhart reflects, “Wow, what a gift of faith that they gave to trust that I could accompany them. I’ve been doing hospice ministry now for the last almost 20 years of my life, 15 years at Saint Francis, and it’s been about 20 years now with hospice, and I think some of those young men who were dying, who trusted me early on, it feels like in a way they planted the seeds. They opened the door for this part of my ministry, to almost accompanying me in a way.”
In 2005, Revs. Zillhart and Frost, along with their young daughter, moved back to Minneapolis. There, Rev. Zillhart continued to serve as a hospice chaplain until her retirement in the fall of 2024. In 2010, the ELCA finally welcomed these determined and trailblazing pastors and congregations back into its ranks.
Sources:
- Green, S. (n.d.-a). The rev. Phyllis Zillhart. Extraordinary Lutheran Ministries. https://www.elm.org/2011/02/07/phyllis-zillhart/
- Ruth Frost & Phyllis Zillhart. Fifty Years On a Half Century of Ordaining Lutheran Women. (n.d.-a). https://pages.stolaf.edu/lutheranwomensordination/frost-and-zillhart/
- A timeline of HIV and AIDS. HIV.gov. (n.d.). https://www.hiv.gov/hiv-basics/overview/history/hiv-and-aids-timeline#year-1994
- History. Extraordinary Lutheran Ministries. (n.d.). https://www.elm.org/history/
- Hawkins, L. (2025, June 16). Interview with Reverend Phyllis Zillhart . Christ Our Shepherd Lutheran Church. https://coslutheran.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/Rev-Phyliss-Zillhart-interview-June-9.pdf
- (2010, April 16). Extraordinary Lutheran Ministries, In The Beginning. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PVOz3Z7t9L0
Watch Extraordinary Lutheran Ministries, In The Beginning, a video from Extra Ordinary Lutheran Ministries on the extraordinary ordination of Revs. Zillhart, Frost, and Johnson below: