- Well Kathy, thank you so much for doing this and if I could just get some background information. 

- Okay. 

- If you could first say your name. 

- My name is Katherine or Kathy Austin Mahle. 

- Wonderful. And are you lay or clergy? 

- I'm clergy. 

- Good. And your religious tradition is? 

- The United Methodist. 

- Wonderful! Kathy when and where were you born? 

- I was born in Norwich, New York. 

- Hmm! 

- In 1945. 

- Okay, wonderful. Where is Norwich? 

- It's outside of New York City, sort of northwest of New York City, south of Albany. It's south of Cooperstown. 

- Okay! 

- You know where Cooperstown is? 

- Yes, yes, that's helpful! That's good! Where did you go to school? Graduate or Divinity School? 

- I am a graduate of Deloitte College in Wisconsin. And I am also a graduate of United Theological Seminary of the Twin Cities. And I graduated in 1978. 

- Mm hmm. Thank you. What kind of work or ministry were you doing at the time of Reimagining? 

- At the time of Reimagining? I was serving as the Lead Pastor at Hamlin United Methodist Church. And I was on the Board of the Greater Minneapolis Council of Churches. 

- Oh, okay, alright. And after Reimagining what kind of work or ministry have you done since then? 

- I was at Hamlin until 1997. 

- Okay. 

- At which time I became a District Superintendent for the Old Metro West District of the United Methodist Church in Minnesota. 

- Great, thank you, thank you. Now how and when did you first become aware of feminist theology? 

- Well it would have been in Seminary. And I started Seminary in 1974 so. 

- Mm. Do you remember how you reacted to it at that time? What you thought of it? 

- Hmm? Well it made sense (laughs). I think it was pretty easy for me to adopt and understand about inclusive language. That was sort of the first place that I was confronted with it, in Seminary. 

- Yeah. 

- And it was an exciting time. There were women going into ministry in larger numbers. 

- Mm hmm. 

- And started reading I don't know, all kinds of books (laughs). 

- Yeah, yeah, yeah. One other question before we move on, what led you to Seminary into Ministry? 

- Well the easy answer is a call. 

- Yes. 

- The more difficult answer is finding a place to be in ministry and living out of that call. The call came when I was in high school. 

- Really? 

- And I knew that I wanted to work in a church setting but I didn't have any role models and so when I was in college I majored in Religious Studies and Sociology. I thought I would go to McCormick Seminary and get a degree there and they had an affiliate program with the University of Chicago in Social Work. And so I was going to go out and save the world and work at the West Side Christian Parrish (laughs). 

- Yeah! What happened? 

- I got married! 

- (laughs) 

- This is 1967. 

- Yes. 

- So, but we need to stop for just a minute. 

- Sure. 

- We're doing an interview.