Camille Cook’s “millennial” generation is marked by questions of what it means to be an adult — making specific questions of faith and vocation seem slightly advanced. But the 29-year-old has bucked the trends of her peers, and recently assumed the position of senior pastor at Georgetown Presbyterian Church — the first woman to hold the title in the congregation’s 230-year history. Cook spoke with The Washington Examiner about her path to the pulpit and how faith overcomes life experience.
Do you consider yourself to be of a specific faith?
Absolutely. Faith is central not just to what I do, but to who I am. I’m a committed Christian with some brand loyalty to the Presbyterians — that’s the tradition I was raised in, and the one I find to be the most accessible way to connect with God, and with other people of faith.
I imagine that when you’re the lead pastor at a multigenerational church, issues come to you that you can’t possibly have had personal experience with. How do you bridge that divide?
I think that regardless of the circumstance, I’m trying to let people have access to the language of faith, and to the strength that faith can provide for them. It’s less about me having lived the same struggle, and more about taking that struggle seriously, and listening to what makes it difficult for them, and then connecting the struggle to faith. It’s about allowing people to be open and honest about what’s happening in their life, and not providing a pre-packaged answer, but listening for places to connect to God. Doing that doesn’t require having a personal understanding of their experience.
You earned your master of divinity degree from Princeton University, and another master’s from Oxford University. With such an elite academic background, what’s your response to people who downplay the importance of academics to faith?
I think that we’re called to love and to serve God with our minds, hearts, souls and strength. And if we’re focused solely on the emotional side, we’re missing the mind. Faith is not simply an academic experience anymore than it is simply an emotional experience. Some people are more inclined to one side or the other, and that’s fine — but we can’t shut out critical thinking any more than we can shut out the mountaintop emotional experiences. We should be accessing our faith, and God, by all of the means given to us.
You’ve invested early in your faith. What about it most attests to its lasting power in this world?
I don’t doubt that it will survive – I believe Christianity has a greater sustaining power than the human model, which may or may not work. The Christian church will survive in some way or form, and God will sustain that. I do think the mainline churches need to be relevant, and to connect up with people where they’re at, and bring people together as opposed to driving them apart. Part of my role is to provide hope for people who have invested in this church for generations, and to let them know their traditions won’t die, and there are young people who appreciate them, and who appreciate where they come from and what they’ve allowed for.
At your core, what is one of your defining beliefs?
I believe that everyone has been dealt a different hand, but that we’re called to be in community with each other, and to support each other regardless of backgrounds, strengths and weaknesses. In communities of faith we all have hard times and great times, but we’re there to draw upon each other, and to call on each other in good times and bad. I believe that’s what God wants for a community of faith.
– Leah Fabel
