Bucks
Lutheran Assembly Gay Pastors
Dear Friends,
Good morning. Last week’s story about the Evangelical Lutheran Church’s national assembly caught my attention. It prompted me to ask five local pastors for their comments about gays in the ministry.
For decades, Christian churches have been struggling with what to do with openly gay pastors? The Roman Catholic Church prohibits them from serving in the priesthood, although every priest that I know says that there are plenty of closeted gay priests. Protestant denominations like the Baptists and Methodists ban homosexuals from the ministry. Others like the Episcopal, United Church of Christ, and Unitarians accept them. Quakers don’t have clergymen so I couldn’t ask for an opinion. Two of the three mainline forms of Judaism permit gay rabbis.
We learned last week that the Lutheran church is somewhere in between. And the pastor of the Deep Run Presbyterian Church said the door for acceptance is ajar [in the national assembly].
My fascination with the story began with an Inquirer article. “In January, a discipline committee of the evangelical Lutheran Church in America’s Southeastern Synod voted, 7 to 5, to remove a pastor because he was involved in an open relationship with another man,” the report began (Aug. 27).
But that same discipline committee took the remarkable step of urging Lutherans who opposed the ban on non-celibate gay clergy to work this year for its overturn. “Twenty-two of the 65 regional synod assemblies declared their acceptance of clergy in committed same-sex relationships,” the Inquire continued. The Southeastern Pennsylvania Synod which includes Lutheran churches in the Philadelphia region is one of the 22 synods.
At the August meeting of the Lutheran national assembly, delegates approved, 538 to 431, a document urging all Lutheran bishops and synods to refrain from or demonstrate restraint in disciplining clergy and church employees in a mutual, chaste and faithful, committed, same-gender relationship. The official ban will be reviewed at the national meeting in 2007.
Reverend Raymond Miller is the Pastor at St. John’s Lutheran Church in Quakertown. He was not a voting member to the August Churchwide Assembly but attended as a visitor. “There are 17,646 Lutheran pastors in America,” he told me. “Eighty-three have come out of the closet.
“All mainline Protestant churches are struggling with how to treat gay pastors,” Miller continued.
Will the church divide if the national assembly permits gay pastors two years hence? “That’s an over reaction,” Miller replied. “I doubt it.” At the moment, he believes that Lutheran churches are evenly split about acceptance of same-sex relationships, with one third approving, one third opposing and one third undecided.
“If the Assembly changes the rules to allow gay clergy, we may lose a congregation or two,” Miller thinks. “But people of good will try to stick together.”
Reverend Andrew Lowe is the Pastor of Trinity Lutheran Church in Quakertown. He told me that he wouldn’t be a delegate to the national assembly in 2009 but hopes that the church will stay together.
Reverend
Bernard Kelly is the pastor of St. John’s Richlandtown. He was on vacation when
I was composing this column. But I remember what I wrote about this inclusive
clergyman two years ago. “I don’t have the right to tell you that only I have
the keys to God,” he told me for my column (Free Press,
I remembered a 2005 interview with the former Bishop of 250 Lutheran pastors comprising the Southeastern Pennsylvania synod. Bishop Roy Almquist agrees with the policy of refraining from disciplining [clergy] violators of the ban. “Gay and lesbian people are an important part of our church, and I feel it is time for them to have full participation in the church, including ordination,” the Bishop told me at the time.
The Inquirer reporter wrote that Almquist’s successor, Bishop Claire Burkat, approves of gays in the ministry as well.
Methodists and Presbyterians are wrestling with the issue too. Reverend David Ryan is the pastor of the United Methodist Church in Quakertown. “Our general conference will be in Texas in April, next year,” he said. “Any church, conference or individual can submit a petition [to remove the homosexual ban on the clergy]. “I presume it will be brought up for discussion.”
Methodists may be slower to change. Ryan’s predecessor was a member of the church trial jury, which defrocked former Reverend Elizabeth Stroud from her pastor ship in Germantown.
Presbyterian guidelines don’t permit gay pastors either. But Reverend Keith Crawford-Roberts, Pastor of the Deep Run Presbyterian Church near Dublin, thinks that times are changing. “It’s likely that the assembly will look at this issue in June, 2008,” he began. At the last assembly, delegates gave local Presbyterian groups the option of ignoring the rule if they had a gay pastor with an excellent reputation. “The door for change is ajar,” he said.
I wonder how long it will take for America to understand that people don’t choose to become homosexual? Many scientists tell us that sexual orientation occurs before birth. I’ll never forget what Martina Navratilova once said. “When you see the prejudice against homosexuals and feel the fervor of homophobic zealots,” the famous tennis star and admitted homosexual asked, “why would anyone in their right mind, willingly choose to be gay?”
Why is it so hard to be inclusive?
Sincerely,
Charles Meredith