Pride Month Spotlight: Rev. Dr. Caroline Addington Hall

Throughout June, we’re celebrating LGBTQIA+ people who have shaped our church and our world – trailblazers, advocates, saints, and quietly persistent troublemakers who got us here. Today, we celebrate someone closer to home.

The Rev. Dr. Caroline Addington Hall, known to many of us as Rev. Caro, is a recently retired lesbian priest here in the Diocese of El Camino Real. Earlier in her ministry, she served as vice president of Inter-Anglican Affairs for Integrity, the organization that advocated for full inclusion of LGBTQIA+ Episcopalians until its dissolution in 2022. She is also the author of A Thorn in the Flesh: How Gay Sexuality is Changing the Episcopal Church, which traces why the full inclusion of gay and lesbian Christians in the church’s rites, including ordination and marriage, has proven so explosive and divisive, both within the Episcopal Church and across the wider Anglican Communion. A second edition, shorter than the original and updated to cover the last ten years, was published this January. Fifty years after General Convention first declared that LGBTQIA+ people have a full and equal claim to the church’s care, Rev. Caro’s work is a reminder that this history is still being written by people in our own diocese.