Wonderer. Queer. Clergy. Hopemonger. Scholar.
Finder of socks.
Short Bio:
Mihee Kim-Kort is a Presbyterian minister, agitator, speaker, writer, and slinger of hopeful stories about faith and church. Her writing and commentary can be found in the New York Times, TIME, BBC World Service, USA Today, Huffington Post, Christian Century, On Being, Sojourners, Faith and Leadership, The Revealer, and Religion Dispatches. (Links to some of her work can be found here.) In 2021, she was named one of Center for American Progress’s “21 Faith Leaders to watch.” She is co-pastor with her spouse of First Presbyterian Church in Annapolis, MD and a doctoral candidate in Religious Studies at Indiana University.
Long Bio:
Mihee Kim-Kort is an ordained Presbyterian (PCUSA) minister and serves as co-pastor with her spouse of First Presbyterian Church in Annapolis, MD. She is a doctoral candidate in Religious Studies at Indiana University with degrees in divinity and theology from Princeton Theological Seminary and English Literature and Religious Studies from the University of Colorado-Boulder. She juggles various other jobs including raising three children, itinerant preaching and speaking, writing, hanging out with young people, struggling with being an Enneagram 7, and trying to maintain some semblance of sanity.
Born in Seoul, Korea, she and her parents immigrated here shortly after her birth. Settling in Colorado, she was baptized in a Methodist church before her family joined the local Korean Presbyterian (PCUSA) church. It was here that she learned the faith from an African American man, who was a respected Elder and teacher in the church, and from a little old lady that was the wife of the former pastor of the white Presbyterian congregation that shared the building with the church.
She says: "In all times, the Church, whether the local church or the seminary, gives me hope. I don't understand it most days, this hope, how it comes from something that seems so fallible and imperfect, but I do know in my bones and cells that it is because God is present there in the places that I least expect, and always, in those places that are the most human. It’s these places and people that teach me to keep hoping, keep looking, and keep showing up, and that always stays with me."
This blog represents my views. It does not represent the views of any of the organizations on this blog.
What is true is not that we are meant to be this system of consistent desires and steady ambitions—as if each person is a being totally aware of oneself at all times. Unless, maybe the person is a bodhisattva. Or Gandhi. Generally, people who really have their shit together.
The rest of us are each an amalgamation of stories and dreams, histories and genetics, easily affected by lunar cycles, barometric pressure, and sunshine. We’re made of stardust, and each of us is a complicated mashup of ancestors, cultures, ideologies, and time periods. But, we are created in the image of the one who is named, “I am who I am,” and in that, somehow called to the miraculous and divine work of creation, of imagining, of redeeming, of calling-out, of sanctifying, of living and moving throughout this world.
(From Outside the Lines)
