Rev. Wendy Fitting

The Reverend Wendy Fitting came to the Independent Christian Church as Extension Minister in 1989. She was called as its settled minister and installed in 1994. Rev. Fitting was educated at New York University and Antioch University, and received her Master of Divinity degree from Harvard Divinity School in 1989.

Prior to entering the ministry Wendy worked for the Massachusetts Department of Mental Health, starting in 1974 as a ward attendant at the Walter E. Fernald State School for the Mentally Retarded in Waltham. Raised as a Unitarian Universalist it was Wendy's early ambition to serve in its ministry; a dream that would be realized more than 20 years later.

Her work in the Fernald institution and later for the Central and Harbor Area Offices of DMH greatly influenced Wendy's deepening interest in religious subjects, especially the dignity of the human person, the reality of the human spirit, and the power of grace. She was further inspired to study for the ministry by her association with the writings of Jean Vanier, Henri Nouwen, and Wolf Wolfensberger, who acquainted her with the L'Arche and Social Role Valorization movements. These philosophies, closely associated with liberation theology, have had a profound and positive effect in dignifying and humanizing state-funded treatment of people with developmental disabilities.

Wendy's studies in divinity school focused on Process Theology and the idea of grace, especially in the fiction of Flannery O'Connor. The focus of her Master's Thesis is the history of the eugenics movement in the United States and its influence of the Nazi euthanasia program of the 1930s.

In addition to her ministry in Gloucester, Reverend Fitting is a regular consultant to the Northeast Regional Office of the Massachusetts Department of Mental Retardation.