Mary Ann Lundy dies at age 92

LOUISVILLE — Mary Ann Weese Lundy, 92, died March 11 in Bloomington, Minnesota. Along with her longtime involvement in the Sanctuary movement, she led the Women’s Ministry Unit in the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), helped organize and put on the Re-Imagining Conference in 1993, and for four years beginning in 1995 was Deputy General Secretary of the World Council of Churches in Geneva, Switzerland.

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Lundy earned a bachelor’s degree from West Virginia University and a Master of Divinity from Union Theological Seminary. She had an expansive career including teaching English, Spanish, music and women's studies. She worked for the Presbytery of the Twin Cities Area and also directed the National Student YWCA in New York. Her commitment to social justice, included being part of the Sanctuary movement sheltering refugees in U.S. churches, resulted in her being named an unindicted co-conspirator in 1986 and being placed under house arrest at her home in Minnesota.

She later became the Director of Women's Ministry in the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), where she wrote a proposal for an international theological gathering to study and honor the contributions of women. In her work with the WCC, she was joined in Geneva by her husband, the Rev. Donald J. Wilson. She chaired the planning for the 1995 World Assembly in Harare, Zimbabwe.

Born Mary Ann Weese in Morgantown, West Virginia, on Deccmber 23, 1932, she graduated from West Virginia University in 1954. While at school she met Richard Alden Lundy; the couple were married in 1956. She completed a Master of Divinity at Union Theological Seminary in New York in 1957, and spent the early part of her career teaching English and Spanish in public schools, while accompanying Richard to pastorates in Kelseyville, California, and Moscow, Idaho. From 1972 to 1980 she was assistant for ministry at McKinley Memorial Presbyterian Church in Champaign, Illinois.

While Richard was pastor of St. Luke Presbyterian Church in Wayzata, Minnesota, the congregation became one of the first Presbyterian churches to shelter refugees from Central America, taking in the former paramiltary known as Rene Hurtado.

In 1982 Lundy returned to New York as the director of the National Student Young Women’s Christian Association and continued to promote the Sanctuary movement, co-chairing the Sanctuary Committee at The Riverside Church and traveling to share testimony of refugees with Presbyterian churches curious about becoming sanctuaries.

As part of a national network of activists, in 1986 she transported a refugee family from Tucson, Arizona, to sanctuary in The Riverside Church. Together with others, the Rev. John Fife, the pastor of Southside Presbyterian Church in Tucson and Moderator of the 204th General Assembly (1992), had adopted a strategy called “Public Sanctuary,” which meant to leverage public opinion by openly documenting the lives of the people being sheltered. Lundy appeared in an episode of “Bill Moyers’ Journal” on CBS and was interviewed by the Des Moines Register.

Shortly thereafter, FBI agents began visiting the family home in Minnesota, and the house began receiving threatening phone calls “all night,” as Lundy later testified in an oral history, “by harassers, paid by the government I’m sure, saying ‘you are being watched,’ with horses’ hooves in the background and funny sounds and bells.”

That year, 17 Sanctuary workers, including Fife, were tried in U.S. District Court for conspiracy, transport, and harboring of people in violation of immigration law. Mary Ann Lundy and 11 others were called to testify. Lundy refused, pleading the First Amendment: “I choose not to testify on the basis of my First Amendment right to freedom of religion, and I invoke my privilege as a Presbyterian elder not to speak against my community of faith.” She was held in contempt of court and sentenced to house arrest for the duration of the trial.

Lundy began work at the national agency level of the PC(USA) in 1987 as director of the Women’s Ministry Unit. As co-chair of the convening committee for the World Council of Churches’ Ecumenical Decade: Churches in Solidarity with Women, she responded to a call for a feminist/womanist theological conference. Together with organizers Sally Hill of Minneapolis and Judith Strausz-Clement of Seattle, Lundy organized the 1993 gathering known as Re-Imagining, which brought more than 2,000 people to Minneapolis.

Immediately following the event, the organizers faced accusations of heresy and witchcraft — chiefly surrounding a personification of feminine wisdom, Sophia. Lundy specifically was a target of character assassination. She later told Presbyterian Historical Society archivist David Staniunas that a VHS tape was circulated among conservative Christian churches that featured a body double of her, averring that “she” worshiped Satan. Under pressure, she resigned from national agency service. The long-term fruit of the conference was the Re-Imagining Community, an ecumenical, radical Christian movement that carried on the ethos of the original Re-Imagining until its dissolution in 2023.

Lundy would go on to serve a year at Hartford Theological Seminary before joining the World Council of Churches as deputy general secretary, from 1995 to 1999. She and Richard had divorced in 1991, and she married former Presbyterian mission co-worker the Rev. Don Wilson. The couple retired to Santa Fe, New Mexico.

Receiving the PC(USA)’s Women of Faith Award in 1986, Lundy wrote: “The church and the world in this day will need the remarkable gifts of women to be healers and reconcilers, to be mediators and peacemakers.”

Lundy and her husband moved to Santa Fe in 1999. She served on the board and as an interim director at Ghost Ranch Education and Retreat Center. She was a member of First Presbyterian Church of Santa Fe, where she was an elder and on the board of the Interfaith Community Shelter. In 2023, she and Don moved to Walnut Creek, California, and then moved to Bloomington, Minnesota in January 2025 to be near family.

She leaves her husband, Donald J. Wilson, as well as two children, son Jeremy (Cynthia) Lundy of Waverly, Minnesota, and daughter Megan (Jeff) Oberle of Edina, Minnesota; grandchildren, Nate, Brooke and Brynn Lundy, Samuel and Rory Goodell, Roman Oberle, and Elleni (Nate) Fellows, all in the Minneapolis metro area; and her brother, Samuel (Ellen) Weese of Wayne, Pennsylvania. Lundy was the daughter of Samuel J. Weese and Leonora Sims Weese.

A reception to honor her will be held in Minneapolis from 1 p.m. through 4 p.m. Central Time on Saturday, April 19, at the Cremation Society of Minnesota-Edina at 7110 France Ave S. in Edina, Minnesota.

A Celebration of Life will be held in the Santa Fe area in May or June. Details to be shared in the near future.

In lieu of flowers, donations can be made to the Interfaith Community Shelter in Santa Fe or the Center for Victims of Torture in Minneapolis.

David Staniunas of Presbyterian Historical Society contributed to this report.