Affirmation at Last: Remembering Rev. Dr. Rick Huskey
The reinstatement of The Rev. Dr. Richard (Rick) Huskey on June 14, 2025, was a holy act of reversal. It was a final chapter penned at the eleventh hour – nearly fifty years after the Church stripped him of his credentials for being gay.
Too ill to be ordained in person, Rick was nonetheless voted on and approved by clergy in the Minnesota Annual Conference. The annual conference took up a special offering to assist Bishop Lanette Plambeck and members of the Minnesota and Susquehanna Conferences to be at Rick’s hospital bedside for a re-ordination ceremony.
Rick said of this moment: “It’s completing the circle.”
But this moment didn’t erase what came before. Though the Church reached out to Rick in the spirit of reconciliation, the pain and the cost still matter – to Rick, to Affirmation and the Reconciling movement, and to the Church. But the fact that Rick lived to experience the Church’s embrace at last: that matters, too.
Rev. Dr. Rick Huskey received with open arms a calling to serve a Church that did not know how to embrace him. His bishop gave him the choice between hiding his identity and losing his credentials. Rick asked in return:
“What you are saying to me is that if I am honest and speak truth, that I am a gay man with a call to ministry, I am unfit for ministry. But, if I lie, I am fit?”
In the end, Rick could not justify a life of ministry built upon dishonesty.
Before the Reconciling movement came to be, Rick was already building what did not yet exist: a place for God’s LGBTQ+ beloveds to experience the love of God’s people. In the way of John Wesley, Rick was an ardent advocate for those discarded by the Church. He was well acquainted with John Wesley’s deep friendship with Thomas Blair, a man imprisoned for his sexual orientation. Like John Wesley, Rick chose a costly life of integrity, vowing to become “more vile.”*
Says Bishop Karen Oliveto, the first out LGBTQ+ bishop in The United Methodist Church: “Rick Huskey loved the Church, even when it didn’t know how to love him back.”
When he could not follow his call, Rick drew a wider circle as co-founder of the United Methodist Gay Caucus. The Caucus would later become Affirmation, which began organizing congregations for inclusion and formed the Reconciling Congregations Program (RCP). RCP became the Reconciling Ministries Network.
The Reconciling movement exists because Rick mobilized the pain of exclusion to blaze a trail for LGBTQ+ United Methodists. He remained loyal to his calling by a different road, as a physician specializing in geriatric medicine. In lieu of a congregation, he tended to what he called “the vineyard’s most important temple: the human body.”
RCP co-founder Mark Bowman lauded Rick’s medical career, which was characterized by his kind and courageous nature. But “even as Rick succeeded in a medical career over the years, the regret that the Church did not affirm his ministry still lingered with him.”
Nevertheless, says RMN Executive Director Jan Lawrence, “Rick’s calling to serve LGBTQ+ people in The United Methodist Church was lived out for his remaining 50 years.” Rick’s life was a testament not only to perseverance but also to possibility. Justice can take a lifetime, and yet a lifetime is the length of the race before each of us.
Thanks be to God for the life, labor, and liberation of Rev. Dr. Rick Huskey. May we inherit his legacy of vile* compassion and faithfulness.
Says RCP co-founder Rev. Beth Richardson: “I can see him now, dancing with the Affirmation saints who went before and have welcomed him to the heavenly banquet. He is wearing a rainbow stole.”
With thanks to:
Mark Bowman & LGBTQ-RAN
Dr. Ashley Boggan
Crystal Caveniss
Christa Meland
Rev. David Meredith
Jan Lawrence
Jim Patterson
Rev. Beth Richardson
*John Wesley gained a reputation for preaching in socially unacceptable settings. According to historian Rev. Dr. Ted Campbell, John Wesley’s offense was more than a matter of place. Says Dr. Ashley Boggan D. of the General Commission on Archives and History: “In order to preach within a parish, you needed permission from the bishop. Wesley preached in a field, and without permission. When castigated by the parish’s bishop, Wesley responded, ‘Sir, I look upon the world as my parish.’”
John Wesley later recorded in his journal: “At four in the afternoon, I submitted to be more vile, and proclaimed in the highways the glad tidings of salvation.”
