On 21 May, LELBP deacon and LLSTA member Vija Klīve passed into eternity.
Vija Klīve (née Siksna; 1944–2026) was born and died in Riga.
.
Vija was only six weeks old when she set out with her parents into exile. The family lived in displaced persons, or DP (Displaced Persons), camps in Germany until they moved to the USA. Vija studied modern languages at Knox College, earned a master’s degree in French literature at Northwestern University and in library science at Columbia University. While living in New York, she was active in the Latvian community, especially in the organization “Baltic Appeal to the United Nations,” or BATUN (Baltic Appeal to the United Nations).
Together with her husband Visvaldis Varnesis Klīve — a theologian, philosopher, and pastor — she came to know India in foreign mission work, with its various cultures and religions, and also gained experience in Africa. Her mission experience shaped Vija to be open to the cultures, perspectives, and ways of life of other peoples.
In order to better understand the Church and to work more effectively as a team with her husband, she attended theology courses and in 1990 was ordained a deacon in the USA. Vija served for several years in the Latvian congregation in Columbus, Ohio, but upon returning to Latvia in the early 1990s she served, together with her husband, in the Vecumnieki congregation. Vija took part in the revival of the choir “Dziesmuvara” — the choir in which her parents had once met and in which she herself also sang.
For more than ten years Vija led the Latvian Lutheran Women Theologians’ Association, devoting particular attention to contacts with the world’s churches and their organizations, translating documents and publications in order to inform others about the situation of the (non-)ordination of women in Latvia. Her life was guided by a deep conviction of the need always to stand up for human rights. As a deacon she saw herself as a facilitator who helps people on their way to God.
.
Text from the exhibition “The Inconvenient Calling: Women Clergy in the Lutheran Church”
