Many Jobless After Merger : Lutheran Bishops in Nostalgic Meeting

Bishops of the Lutheran Church in America, most of them without jobs in the new Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, held a bittersweet final gathering recently for some reminiscing and some regrets.

Only 12 of the 30 bishops were elected as bishops in the new church, a product of a three-way merger that officially goes into effect Jan. 1.

In at least three cases, including that of Los Angeles Bishop Stanley E. Olson of the Pacific Southwest Synod, the bishops were told that though they were eminently qualified, they could not be considered for certain church leadership positions because the church wants to employ more women and members of minority groups.

Olson criticized the new policies several weeks ago in a letter to the new church headquarters.

Some bishops welcomed the changeover because they were eager to retire; some of those elected bishops in the new church found that the creation of small synods, or districts, can be financially burdensome.

For many bishops who attended the three-day gathering last week in Asheville, N.C., however, it was a chance to swap stories about church responses to the social and political issues of the 1960s and internal debates like those that led to the 1970 decision to ordain women.

“We’re going to smell up the place with our nostalgia,” the Rev. Lloyd Burke, a retired bishop who preceded Olson in the Los Angeles post, told the gathering.

Presiding Bishop James R. Crumley Jr., whose job is over at the end of the year, said he will teach at two South Carolina Lutheran schools in 1988.

In the other two merging Lutheran denominations, Presiding Bishop David W. Preus of the American Lutheran Church will become executive director of the Global Mission Institute at Luther Northwestern Theological Seminary in St. Paul, Minn., and Bishop Will Herzfeld of the Assn. of Evangelical Lutheran Churches will continue serving as pastor of Bethlehem Lutheran Church in Oakland, a post he never left while heading the smallest party to the merger.