Mary Maaga
The Rev. Dr. Mary Maaga (California-Nevada Conference Photo)
California-Nevada Conference Editor’s note: People are making history every day in California-Nevada. Throughout 2023 we will be spotlighting clergy and laity who work to make life better for people down the street and across the country. Click here to see the video interview with Rev. Dr. Mary Maga.
“I am deeply curious about people,” states Rev. Dr. Mary Maaga, pastor of Galt UMC. Maaga’s curiosity runs deep and has woven into her work in various ministry settings throughout her life including as a writer, professor, Life Coach, retreat leader, minister to those who are homeless and incarcerated, as well as a United Methodist clergy currently spearheading a community wide project. “Wesley talks about the world being his parish. For me, the human mind, heart, and soul conjunction is my field of study—that’s what I care about the most.”
CONVERSION
Growing up in a home with a staunchly anti-Christian agnostic father, her curiosity about Christianity began when she was eight years old after the annual family tradition of viewing of Ben Hur. Afterwards, she gave her life to Christ in a simple prayer. As an avid reader, Maaga asked her dad what book she could read to know more about the Ben Hur story. Surprisingly, her father gave her the family Bible which she immediately read cover to cover.
“By the end [of reading through the entire Bible], I concluded two things,” explains Maaga, “…that I was going to spend my life making sense of this--I had found my vocation. Second, that my dad had it wrong that there were lots of revolutionary, lots of progressive and lots of expansive viewpoints in the Bible…”
It wasn’t until Maaga was 21 years old that she met other Christians. Her longing for community led her to linger outside First UMC Sacramento on Saturdays to hear the organist practice. Knowing it would cost her a relationship with her parents, she finally gained the courage to attend worship.
A QUEST
The experience was transformative in many ways including setting Maaga on the path of doctoral studies to answer a gnawing question about how religion can go wrong. Her interest was piqued by learning about her pastor Rev. John Moore’s’ family. In 1978, Moore’s’ two daughters and grandson died in the infamous massacre in Jonestown, Guyana. The women were part of the leadership of People’s Temple that relocated from San Francisco to Jonestown, Guyana a few years previous.
“Had the leaders of Peoples Temple been willing to say, ‘We've got one solution to the social problems of racism and ageism, but there may be others equally valid,’ I wonder how many of the educated elite would have been willing to move to Guyana?” writes Maaga (p.137 Hearing the Voices of Jonestown)
“Jonestown is an example of religious extremism,” explains Maaga. “I felt like if I had any shot at rescuing progressive zealous Christianity from religious extremism, I had to understand how it developed in this most extreme case.” Maaga researched different ‘threads’ in the Bible that could justify such a cult including a ‘purity thread’ in which people focus on protecting God’s holiness and themselves from those identified as ‘unpure.’ This can lead to dehumanization and division,” states Maaga. “On the other hand, you have this, I call, ‘revolutionary hospitality’ strand. When that is too extreme, it has no spiritual basis.”
Maaga finished her thesis, a book and most recently interviewed in the 2018 documentary movie Jonestown, The Women Behind the Massacre. She found her answer in the form of a question she uses in her ministry today: How do you participate in a passion driven, spirit driven application of Christianity in the world without it becoming a kind of extremism that identifies who is “outside” and who’s “inside”?
“That’s been the question that I come at things with. I refuse to draw an insider, outsider wall. Every church and community has its divisions,” adds Maaga. “The question is how do I as a Christian make the divisions less stark and more fluid in order to honor the sacred worth of all people? I include in this even, or rather especially, people I regard as enemies.”
TODAY
In her current position as pastor of Galt UMC, Maaga was curious about serving the community and wondered how the church could motivate the community to see itself as inclusive of everybody: elderly people, poor people, Veterans, homeless, or middle class. That’s when Maaga uncovered a clue.
“When I got to Galt I sized up that they had an affordable housing crisis—DUH! Everywhere in California has an affordable housing crisis! But what we had here in Galt not so many churches have. We had a couple of empty lots.”
Addressing community concerns is a major part of Maaga’s pastoral ministry. As part of her focus, Maaga makes a point to get to know both church and community leaders finding connections and ways to work together. Maaga put together an exploratory committee to ask, “Could we make use of these lots for the betterment of our community?”
The committee faced a myriad of setbacks. A thick green folder filled inches high with papers sits on her desk that she calls her “dead ends,” substantiating a year and a half of roadblocks. “I just don’t take roadblocks seriously,” states Maaga. “…guess what happened in the middle of all the dead ends? This exploratory committee of church leaders started to get excited about what might be possible! So, every dead end was not the end of the ideas. In fact, it fueled their prayer lives together and their excitement over, ‘God doesn’t want us to go that way but that doesn’t mean God doesn’t want us to go forward… God is showing us the way forward!’ ”
Now, Maaga is spearheading not one but two projects: an affordable housing project for seniors and veterans for the Galt community; and leading the effort to build a freestanding food pantry and resource center on Galt UMC property. The housing and beautification project grew to not only include the two lots sold by the church but also two abandoned lots in the town’s historic district.
The second project stemmed from the need to access grant monies to meet the growing demand of the church’s 13 year old food pantry ministry. The church needed to incorporate the ministry and turn it into a 501c3 non-profit they called the Sunshine Food Pantry and Resource Center Incorporated. Due to the growth, the pantry also needed a bigger location. Plans are underway to replace the current church office space with a large stand-alone million dollar facility to house the center. Donations from the city, county, and private donors from outside the community have raised half of the funds so far. The church has recently begun a fundraising campaign in earnest.
Maaga’s curiosity helps her find ways to motivate and engage people from within her church connecting with the community at large to transform them both. “The idea is that the church is more of a springboard into the community,” states Maaga, “and not so much insular and contained within four walls.”
BIOGRAPHY
Dr. Maaga has a PhD with distinction from Drew University in Religion and Society. She trained as an anthropologist in West Africa and has an expertise in new religious movements teaching several years as a professor at the University of Stirling in Scotland. Maaga wrote several books including Hearing the Voices of Jonestown: Putting a Human Face on an American Tragedy, The Alabaster Orphan: A Mystic Girl’s Journey with Jesus, and Cultivating Courage. She was married to the Rev. Boikanyo C. Maaga, a native of South Africa, who passed away in 2003. They have two children, John Desmond Tutu Maaga, age 26 and Zola Mary Magdalene Maaga, age 24.
JB Brayfindley is a freelance journalist. This article is republished with permission from the California-Nevada Conference website.