Lutheran Pastor--Brother of Actor David Soul--Jailed

Police broke into a barricaded Lutheran church today and arrested a dissident minister who had been holed up inside for eight days.

The Rev. Daniel Solberg, brother of actor David Soul, was arrested inside the Nativity Lutheran Church in this Pittsburgh suburb, witnesses said.

Two Hampton Township police officers arrested Solberg and then cut a chain used to lock the glass doors at the front of the church, according to Joe Landefeld, a member of the church.

“They smashed a side window out. The next thing I saw they were at the front door with bolt cutters to cut the chain that was chaining the two front doors together,” said Landefeld, 43, who was at the church when police arrived.

Solberg, who was said to be clutching a Bible, offered no resistance, witnesses said.

He was charged with criminal trespass and defiant trespass, according to a magistrate’s clerk, and taken to Allegheny County Jail in Pittsburgh after refusing an offer to be released on his own recognizance if he would agree not to return to the church.

The police action came two days after Bishop Kenneth May, head of the Western Pennsylvania-West Virginia Synod of the Lutheran Church in America, suspended Solberg from the ministry for refusing to give up his pulpit.

Solberg is a leader of the pro-union Denominational Ministry Strategy, which claims that Pittsburgh-based companies led by U.S. Steel Corp. and Mellon Bank are responsible for “corporate evil,” causing unemployment in heavy industry in western Pennsylvania.