Religion and Life Hour – Rev. Dr. Mary Luti

Rev. Dr. Mary Luti is a retired minister and professor. For twenty-two years before her retirement, Luti taught the history of Christianity, Christian worship, and preaching at the former Andover Newton Theological School (now Andover Newton Seminary at Yale). Ordained in the United Church of Christ, she also served First Church in Cambridge, Congregational, in Cambridge, Massachusetts, as its sixteenth minister since 1633 and the first woman to occupy that historic pulpit. Her most recent publication is Do This: Communion for Just and Courageous Living, from Pilgrim Press (Stillspeaking Writers Group). Mary Luti is a long time seminary educator and pastor, author of Teresa of Avila’s Way and numerous articles, and founding member of The Daughters of Abraham, a national network of interfaith women’s book groups. Mary Luti grew up in Massachusetts and New Hampshire, in a family of Italian Catholics, with a dose of Irish tossed in for good measure! Steeped in pre-Vatican II Catholicism, with its emphasis on ritual and mystery, she was in college when the Council’s reforms broke upon the Catholic world. Her subsequent Catholic life, including 19 years as a member of a women’s religious community, was shaped by the intellectual and spiritual challenges stirred up by the transition from one kind of Catholic Church to another. She studied theology with the Jesuits at Boston College, earning a Ph.D in the late 1980s. At the same time she began teaching at Andover Newton Theological School, where her relationships with UCC faculty members and students helped her clarify nagging questions about her religious commitments. She joined a UCC congregation in 1990. In 2000, she accepted a call to First Church in Cambridge, Congregational, UCC, and was ordained that same year. Mary served as senior minister of First Church for eight years, until she was called back to Andover Newton to be Visiting Professor of Worship and Preaching and the Director of the Wilson Chapel.