Panel Urges Minister Defrocked

A Lutheran minister, whose militant bid to help the unemployed led him to defy his bishop and a judge, serve a jail term and boycott his disciplinary hearing, should be defrocked, a church panel said today.

The Rev. D. Douglas Roth will remain on the clergy rolls until his appeals within the church are exhausted, said Kenneth May, bishop of the regional synod of the Lutheran Church in America. The panel’s recommendation will have to be ratified at a June convention, May said. Until then, Roth is suspended as an ordained minister.