Only one of three homosexual Lutheran seminarians...

Only one of three homosexual Lutheran seminarians who were recently certified for ordination will get a bishop’s recommendation for a pastoral appointment. He is Jeff Johnson of Lancaster, who said he would remain celibate as an ordained minister and would inform his bishop if that situation changed.

Jim Lancaster of Westminster and Joel Workin of Walcott, N.D., both told their assigned bishops in Southern California that they were not willing to officially state their compliance.

All three are about to graduate from Pacific Lutheran Theological Seminary in Berkeley. When they stated their sexual orientations last February they presented the merger-product Evangelical Lutheran Church in America with its first major controversy since the denomination’s Jan. 1 start-up.

Presiding Bishop Herbert W. Chilstrom of Chicago announced this month that Jim Lancaster had originally said he would refrain from sexual activity, but “changed his mind and will not be recommended for ordination.”

Johnson told Religious News Service that he assured church officials that he is celibate, but held open the possibility that he might develop a sexual relationship with another man. Johnson said he nevertheless finds the church’s position on homosexuals to be “offensive,” partly because probing questions about private life are asked of homosexual candidates for ordination but not of heterosexual candidates.

Acknowledging this “double standard,” the Rev. Craig Settlage, director of candidacy for the church’s Division for Ministry, said that all ministerial candidates should be treated equally. “Now both (homosexuals and heterosexuals) will be asked for their understanding of the appropriate (sexual) conduct,” Settlage suggested.

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Sister Mary Glennon, the first woman vicar for the nearly 2,400 sisters working in the Los Angeles Catholic Archdiocese, will be welcomed at a 2:30 p.m. prayer service and reception Sunday at Loyola Marymount University. A member of the Congregation of the Sisters of Holy Faith, she has been principal of two elementary schools in the archdiocese and was a school principal in Louisiana when Archbishop Roger M. Mahony appointed her a few months ago to the position after a search by the 50-member Archdiocesan Sisters’ Council.

Howard Clinebell, who will retire next month as professor of pastoral care and counseling at the School of Theology at Claremont, will lecture on his specialty at 10:30 a.m. Tuesday at the seminary’s Mudd Auditorium. Clinebell also will retire from Claremont Graduate School, where he taught religion and psychology. Praising Clinebell for his 29 years at the Methodist-related seminary, the Rev. Richard W. Cain, the school’s president, said, “We shall look forward to the new books he surely will be writing.”

Actor Clifton Davis, who plays a minister on the NBC television series “Amen,” will talk to more than 4,000 youngsters from Seventh-day Adventist Pathfinder Clubs at a four-day camp meeting starting Thursday at Glen Helen Regional Park near San Bernardino. Davis is at home in a religious setting: He is a minister for the Seventh-day Adventist Church in Loma Linda.