Delegates from congregations of the newly merged...

Delegates from congregations of the newly merged Evangelical Lutheran Church in America in Los Angeles, Ventura, Kern, Santa Barbara and San Luis Obispo counties will select a bishop next week in their first synodical, or district, convention.

Bishop Nelson Trout, 66, who headed the old American Lutheran Church’s South Pacific District from its office in Woodland Hills, is a candidate. He said, “I don’t consider myself a front-runner, just a runner.”

More than 600 clergy and lay delegates, representing 172 congregations, are to cast their first ballots Thursday morning at the convention site, the Los Angeles Airport Hyatt Hotel. The top three vote-getting candidates will address delegates Friday morning and a winner is expected by that afternoon.

The meeting of the California West Synod, which has been unofficially called the “Angelica Synod,” will end June 7.

Rules governing the formation of the regional synods prohibit pre-convention polling and talking with possible candidates, but a bishop of the Lutheran Church in America’s old Pacific Southwest Synod said that more than 30 names of willing candidates have surfaced trhough polling in Northern California. Bishop Stanley E. Olson of Los Angeles, whose name is on the list, said pre-convention meetings have also been scheduled, contrary to the rules.

The Northern California synod, which includes northern Nevada, will meet July 10-12 in San Jose.

Also that weekend, 450 delegates from about 125 churches will convene at the Town and Country Convention Center in San Diego to elect a bishop for that synod covering five Southern California counties.

Elsewhere, the Rev. William Lazareth of New York, who ran third in voting for presiding bishop May 1 at the denomination’s national convention, was elected bishop of the Metropolitan New York Synod last week.

The Rev. Barbara K. Lundblad, 43, another New York City pastor, who had run a surprising fourth in balloting for presiding bishop, had earlier taken herself out of consideration for any regional bishop post, saying that she felt her calling at present was to remain as a pastor.

DATES

The impact of the religious right on political matters will be addressed Sunday by Sen. Arlen Specter (R-Pa.) in a keynote speech for a symposium in Los Angeles. Specter,a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee and a frequent target of the religious right on social issues, will speak shortly after the 9 a.m. start of the meeting, sponsored by the American Jewish Congress and other groups. Syndicated columnist Cal Thomas and KABC-TV commentator Bill Press will also debate “Is the Religious Right Right?”

A growing movement toward Orthodox Jewish observances, especially by young professionals, will be assessed in a daylong conference Sunday at Hillel Hebrew Academy in Beverly Hills. The conference on the so-called Baal Tshuvah movement, said to be the first such event in the country, begins at 9 a.m. with talks by Rabbis Nachum Braverman of Aish HaTorah, Jerusalem; Abner Weiss of Beverly Hills’ Beth Jacob Congregation, and Daniel Lapin of Pacific Jewish Center.