The Order of Hildegard took shape around a shared vision for community, one born from painful experiences in patriarchal religious systems, and the clarity that pain eventually brought. The people who came together carried deep experience in spiritual community, and found they shared common ground in both disillusionment and hope. What we built from there combined that passion with real skill: rebuilding a vision of spiritual community free of unchecked, oppressive ideology.

That's the kind of community building we care about, the kind that reshapes the landscape and roots out oppressive institutional patterns. Then the real work began: building the team. (You can find bios for our full team and Wisdom Council elsewhere on the site.)

Since then, we've grown a board, a networking council, active cohorts, and now graduates, together forming a peer leadership team that helps guide everything we do.

The mission of The Order of Hildegard is to center, celebrate, and develop interfaith and cross-vocational spiritual leadership, particularly for those marginalized by traditional religious structures.

The Order of Hildegard is for individuals interested in expanding creative spiritual leadership and the role of chaplain in the world, and we invite people of all paths of goodwill. We especially invite those who have been historically harmed by traditional religious structures such as LGBTQIA+, BIPOC, people with disabilities and neurodiversities and those otherwise disillusioned with harmful, puritanical patriarchal religious structures.