Chilstrom Brings Moderating Style to Leadership of Lutheran Church

Bishop Herbert W. Chilstrom, 55, recently chosen to lead the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, considers himself “an evangelical conservative with a radical social conscience” and has said he hopes all pastors will take that approach.

However, Chilstrom’s mild manner of speaking and conciliatory approach to problems seem to contradict the usual picture of a radical.

Chilstrom, elected presiding bishop May 1 at the founding convention of the new church, explained to delegates then that “if you take Scriptures seriously, it will make you rather radical.”

While serving as the Lutheran Church in America bishop for Minnesota since 1976, Chilstrom allowed congregations such as the Reformation Lutheran Church in St. Paul to conduct an active ministry with homosexuals, but he denied ordination to a woman who was an acknowledged lesbian.

Personal Morality

Asked by delegates how he would handle cases of already ordained ministers who reveal that they are homosexual, Chilstrom said: “The fundamental question is personal morality not sexual orientation. Each one of us is responsible for our behavior.” He said he can tolerate a minister who keeps his homosexuality quiet and leads a celibate life.

But in spite of Chilstrom’s claim of a radical social conscience (on abortion, for instance, he says it is “a tragic option” permissible when the woman has been raped or has her health endangered), admirers have pointed more to his moderating style.

On peace-building tasks assumed by the church, Chilstrom said in a speech two years ago: “Those who work for peace always look a bit out of step. The sides always seem far apart--whether it’s labor and management, the Americans and Russians, the Jews and Arabs, the Northern Hemisphere and Southern Hemisphere, the rich and the poor, white persons and blacks, yes, even the Lutherans. . . . “

Chilstrom, one of the 70 members of a commission that designed the three-way church merger, was credited with smoothing over critical differences early in 1986 between leaders of the two biggest churches, the Lutheran Church in America and the American Lutheran Church.

He also said he bears no ill will toward some conservative congregations, mostly in the American Lutheran Church, who have threatened to leave the new denomination.

“My basic concern is not whether they leave. My concern is that they leave for the right reasons, and not on the basis of rumors,” Chilstrom said last week. When they have learned all there is to learn about the new church and still want to leave, “we ought to wish them well,” he said.

Chilstrom, tall (6 foot, 3 1/2), lean and white-haired, has a personal bridge with the American Lutheran Church. His wife, Corinne, was ordained as a minister in that church in 1985 and has been serving as assistant pastor at Minneapolis’ Bethlehem Lutheran Church.

After her husband’s election she said that she would move with him to the Chicago headquarters of the new denomination and leave the pastorate in order to support him in his work and travel duties.

The parents of three adopted children, the Chilstroms were dealt a blow when their youngest, Andrew, committed suicide in November, 1984.

In their Christmas greeting card the next month, the Chilstroms wrote in part, “The happiest, sweetest, tenderest homes are not those where there has been no sorrow, but those which have been overshadowed with grief, and where Christ’s comfort was accepted.”

At a press conference after his election, Chilstrom said: “Whatever mistakes we made, we live under grace. I say to people, ‘God is with you.’ ”

Raised in the somewhat pietistic background of the predominantly Swedish Augustana Lutheran Church, which merged into the Lutheran Church in America in 1962, Chilstrom earned a master’s degree in theology at Princeton Theological Seminary in 1966 and a doctorate in education at New York University in 1976.