Openly Gay Seminarians Pose Dilemma for Lutheran Officials

‘It’s certainly a courageous thing for them to do.’

--Bishop J. Roger Anderson

Lutheran seminarian Jeff Johnson decided to declare his homosexuality when he felt a surge of pride during a gay and lesbian march on Washington last fall.

“I felt a strong call and gift from God for the ministry (and) I found I had just as strong a call and gift from God for being gay,” said Johnson, 25, of Lancaster, a student at Pacific Lutheran Theological Seminary in Berkeley.

Joel Workin, 26, of Wolcott, N.D., realized while working as a student pastor that he would be false to himself and others if he kept his homosexuality a secret.

Couldn’t Work in ‘the Closet’

“I could not be a pastor in the closet,” said Workin, also a fourth-year student at Pacific Lutheran.

And, although Jim Lancaster wrote editorials for a publication serving gays and lesbians, he too did not speak openly until his final year, when students at the Lutheran seminary begin to seek employment as pastors.

“It became oppressive to have to distance myself from my own life,” said Lancaster, 25, of Westminster.

Soon to graduate from the seminary, all three have made it clear to authorities of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America that they want to be treated the same as other students when it comes to finding a pulpit. The church has few if any openly gay pastors.

“This is the Gospel to me,” Workin said. “Being gay is a gift from God. It’s from coming to terms with that . . . that I came to know what it is to be hurt, abused and oppressed, and to know what it is for God to love me as I am.”

The declaration of their homosexuality should not be seen as a challenge, Johnson said.

“I see this more as my desire to be ordained, to be a parish pastor,” he said, “but to do that as a total person, in honesty and aboveboard with that church. This (public attention) has turned out to be a little bigger deal than I thought it would be.”

Indeed, the seminarians’ apparently unprecedented open avowal of homosexuality poses a dilemma for the church, which formally came into existence Jan. 1 after a merger of three historic Lutheran denominations.

“It’s certainly a courageous thing for them to do,” said J. Roger Anderson, bishop of the church’s Southern California (West) Synod, based in Los Angeles.

While a person is not denied the grace of God on the basis of sexual orientation, he said, “the clergy is expected to lead morally exemplary lives, and that would certainly be the case here.”

In Oakland, Bishop Lyle Miller of the synod of Northern California and Northern Nevada said he and 10 other Western bishops met with the faculty of Pacific Lutheran after the three seminarians declared their homosexuality during interviews to be certified for employment as pastors.

Under Lutheran rules, divinity students are not ordained as ministers until they are actually “called,” or employed, by a parish.

Relying on policies and statements made by the denominations that joined to form the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, the bishops declared that there was nothing to keep those who are homosexual in orientation from seeking ordination.

At the same time, the bishops said that “practicing” homosexuals would be barred.

“I’m not aware of any Scriptures that approve of homosexuality as a life style for religious leaders, and our church is saying that a practicing homosexual will not be ordained,” Miller said.

“That’s the tension in which we find ourselves, recognizing one’s orientation for whatever reasons and yet not endorsing that orientation as a life style to be lived.”

He said the same rule would apply to unmarried heterosexuals, since the church sees traditional marriage as the only acceptable framework for sex.

“I’d say that as a single person I’m within church policy,” Workin said. “But if there comes a time when I find myself entering into a long or committed relationship with another man, and get, as it were, married, I’d be in conflict with the policy of the church. . . . It’s not an unusual situation for Christians to be in, from Martin Luther on.”

Lancaster said the distinction between being homosexual in orientation and life style seemed illogical.

“It’s like saying it’s OK to be left-handed but don’t write with your left hand,” he said.

Although the students were highly spoken of by church authorities, Gary Pence, interim president of Pacific Lutheran, said he thought it may prove difficult for them to find employment as pastors.

“There are many congregations that are sensitive and sympathetic who nonetheless would be reluctant to call a pastor who has admitted a homosexual orientation,” he said. “There’s clearly an ambivalence in our constituency.”

After their certification was granted in December, all three were assigned to the church’s Region 2 for possible employment. Region 2 includes most of the Southwest.

Lancaster said he would rather serve a predominantly gay parish such as San Francisco’s St. Francis Lutheran Church. “My gifts are really more for my own people,” he said.

Too Early to Decide

But Johnson said it was too early to be specific about what kind of church he wants.

Said Workin: “My concern is not to be a gay pastor. I’m a pastor who is gay, and if conditions dictate that I need to work in a predominantly gay parish, I have no problems with that. I have no problems with working in any congregation where there is some tolerance and acceptance.”

The Evangelical Lutheran Church in America is the fourth-largest Protestant denomination. It began operating on Jan. 1, 1988, after the merger of the American Lutheran Church, the Lutheran Church in America and the Assn. of Evangelical Lutheran Churches.

The new organization came about after half a century in which several Lutheran denominations tracing back to Germany and Scandinavia gradually joined forces.

A new alignment along liberal-conservative lines began in the 1970s, leaving churches that hold to Biblical literalism in a separate group known as the Missouri Synod.

The newly formed Evangelical Lutheran Church in America united more moderate and liberal congregations.