Since her days as an undergraduate activist in the 1980s, urging divestment from the apartheid regime in South Africa, Rev. Intriligator has studied, chronicled, and participated in movements for social justice. For her, the life of faith — and basic human morality — call us all to work toward economic equality and full human liberation.
Feminism
From campus “Take Back the Night” marches to activist journalism on the staff of Ms. Magazine in the 1990s to the Women’s March in Boston in 2017, Susanne Skubik Intriligator has worked on the front lines of feminism for more than 30 years. Equality across gender identity and expression has been foundational to her ministry since its inception.
Multiculturalism and Anti-Racism
Susanne grew up in a working-class Catholic family in East Dearborn, Michigan — a neighborhood that, during her childhood years, became majority Lebanese and Muslim and is now known as Little Beirut. Religious and cultural pluralism was a fact of everyday life from early childhood. (It proved to be good preparation for later life; today she is married to a Jewish man and their adult son is a practicing Buddhist.)
Later, as an editor on the multicultural staff of Ms. Magazine, Susanne worked with feminist organizers from around the world, across divisions of race, class, and faith. She worked directly with writers like Alice Walker and Gloria Steinem, editing both the Religion and International News departments.
As an adult, Susanne lived abroad, in Wales, for 13 years. She earned her PhD in a Welsh-speaking culture and parented children who went to Welsh-language schools. She has first-hand experience as an immigrant and cultural outsider.
Today, Rev. Susanne prioritizes anti-racism work within her ministry. Working closely with lay leaders, she helped the Follen congregation to pass a resolution both to become intentionally anti-racist in all its endeavors and to hang a Black Lives Matter banner prominently.
Rev. Susanne also currently directs communications and social media for Moral Movement Mass, a statewide interfaith coalition standing against policies and practices that marginalize poor people, communities of color, and LGBTQ people, based on the work of Rev. Dr. William Barber and his Moral Mondays coalition in North Carolina.