Amy Butler leaves Riverside Church
Amy Butler, the first female pastor to lead the Riverside Church in New York City, is leaving the historic progressive church. After five years at Riverside, Amy Butler will not renew her contract as senior minister, according to a statement from Butler and the church council posted on the church’s website.
Neither the pastor nor the church council gave a reason for Butler’s departure or indicated what she might do next. The update noted, “both she and our congregational leadership have been prayerfully discerning how best to fulfill the work of God in the world to which they are called.”
[A July 11 report in the New York Times cited supporters of Butler who said she was leaving the job because she had spoken up against harassment and pursued better treatment for women and minorities. Her persistence strained an increasingly fractured relationship between her and the church’s lay leaders, Times sources said. The report quoted Kevin Wright, a former executive minister at the church, as saying about Butler’s departure, “There is absolutely no doubt that sexism played a role.”
