Following a new path

Michele Marr

Religious Science is about changing your life by changing your

thoughts. But when Peggy Price first walked into the Huntington Beach

church one Sunday in February 1986, she could hardly have imagined

the direction it would take her life.

Price was going through her third divorce. She had had two brief

marriages, each lasting less than a year. Then she married again. And

though the marriage was turbulent, it lasted more than 15 years. Then

her husband walked out, leaving her with four children, including two

sons from her husband’s previous marriage, and lots of unpaid bills.

“I didn’t see much hope for myself for the future,” she said.

On that February morning at the Huntington Beach Church of

Religious Science the Rev. Peggy Bassett’s message moved her to

tears. Bassett, Price discovered, had been married more times than

she had been.

“She put me in touch with something so important; that God loves

us though everything no matter what, that I could be loved and

accepted in spite of my failings,” said Price. “It was that that gave

me a new life.”

Price began to take all the classes the church offered and went to

every workshop she could. At one class, she met Don Price, a

detective with the Fullerton Police Department, whom she married a

few months later in January 1987. To her family of two sons and two

daughters, Don added his son and daughter and the new family moved to

a home in Huntington Beach.

By 1990, Peggy Price was taking classes to become a licensed

Religious Science Practitioner, a spiritual counselor and coach. As a

young girl she had talked about becoming a minister and now she found

“It was a dream that had never left me.”

She began studying at the Ernest Holmes College School of Ministry

in 1993, taking a full load of classes for three years to graduate.

While still in school, Price was hired by the Huntington Beach church

to be an assistant to the minister. Upon graduation, she was given a

Letter of Call to become its assistant minister.

The church’s longtime senior minister, Peggy Bassett, had become

gravely ill and died. The church had had a series of short-term

senior ministers after her death, including the Rev. Mary Murray

Shelton who was there for three years before a serious back injury

left her unable to work.

When Shelton left, Price became the church’s acting senior

minister then she was hired and installed as its full-time senior

minister in May 1998. In May 1999, she was ordained.

The church was in a state of enormous change.

“We had lost a real icon with Peggy Bassett’s death,” Price said.

And the church, which had long made its home at Seacliff Village,

with Seacliff being torn down, was facing a move.

Privately, Price’s life was being rocked by the illness and death

of her mother.

New to the ministry, Price faced the challenge of moving the

church and re-establishing its stability as well as its presence and

visibility in the community.

“[We needed to] re-anchor ourselves in what is really important,

to remember that we are all God’s children and that we all need to

put our trust in God,” she said.

Price described herself as “a work in progress, willing to grow in

public” and hoped her example would give hope and courage to others

by helping them to realize “we’re all on this path together, learning

together, growing together.”

On Sept. 7, Price is retiring from her role as senior minister.

“I’m not ending my ministry,” she said. “I’m just ending this

phase of it, stepping away from administration.”

She’s going to rest until Christmas, then she has plans.

She wants to write a book and she has a working title, “Finding

Your Voice: How to Live an Inspired Life.” She is passionate about

helping people of different faiths understand each other and she is

serving this year as president of the Greater Huntington Beach

Interfaith Council, for which she was a founding member.

In 2001, Price was awarded a Soroptimist Women Helping Women Award

for the work she has done as a woman minister on behalf on women in

the community. Now she plans to expand her ministry to women who are

struggling like she once struggled herself.

“It’s so important to let anybody know what tremendous power there

is in forgiveness,” she said.

She wants to spend more time with her husband Don, her six

children, seven grandsons and two granddaughters.

During her ministry at the church Price encouraged the

congregation to reach out to the community they live in. She

established an annual Day of Sacred Service when members give their

time to clean up areas like the Shipley Nature Center, the local

beaches and the wetlands. They visit nursing homes and clean up or

make repairs at community transitional shelters.

After the devastating events of Sept. 11, 2001, Price initiated

what promises to be an annual “Season for Nonviolence” to look at

ways to promote peace and nonviolence in the city and throughout the

world.

On her 60th birthday she was asked to officiate the memorial

service for Samantha Runnion, the 5-year-old girl who was abducted

outside her Stanton home and murdered last year.

“It felt like a validation of my ministry to be asked to do such a

sensitive service for a family whose child was so tragically taken

from them,” Price said.

Jeanne Pacini, who became the church’s financial administrator at

the same time Price became its senior minister characterized Price’s

ministry like this: “She’s a very loving person and she shares that

well with others.”

“Just having been there in service to that church has been a

blessing to me every day,” Price said. “I’ve been so grateful to be

there.”

* MICHELE MARR is a freelance writer from Huntington Beach. She

can be reached at [email protected].