About

My name is the Rev. Krista Taves.  I’m a Generation X Unitarian Universalist minister serving Emerson Unitarian Universalist Chapel in Ellisville MO (www.emersonuuchapel.org).   My citizenship is Canadian and I am living and working in the United States as a legal resident.  My background is Russian Mennonite, second generation immigrant on my mother’s side and third generation immigrant on my father’s.  I had originally planned to dedicate my life to studying the politics of memory in the Canadian Russian Mennonite community until another path opened before me, the Unitarian Universalist ministry.  I received a fabulous education at the Toronto School of Theology thanks to the United Church of Canada, the High Anglicans, the Presbyterians, and a not so silent liberal Catholic underground which didn’t have to be nearly as underground in the metropolis of Toronto as it is in St. Louis.  I was also deeply immersed in the vibrant and growing bisexual community of Toronto which, as I understand it, is still pretty vibrant.  I developed a strong sense of queer politics that informed much of my theology and although it has had to be significantly modified to be usable in suburban St. Louis it continues to energize my work and my operative theology.

My social justice passions are reproductive justice and lesbian/gay/bisexual/transgendered civil rights, although life has brought two rescue dogs into our household who we love beyond imagining.

I am passionate about rescuing Christianity from fundamentalism.  Jesus trusted everyone he met to be the person God called them to be.  He offered them a way if they could find it within themselves to take it.  I try to take that path everyday. Some days I fail, other days I do a little better.