RELIGION / JOHN DART : A Surprising New Lutheran Bishop

North Hollywood: Pastor who supports opening the church to homosexuals will oversee 152 congregations in the Southland.

A North Hollywood pastor and university professor who advocates opening the ministry to gays and lesbians will become the Los Angeles-based bishop next year of a Lutheran denomination that recently rejected such a proposal after bitter controversy.

So, who can blame the Rev. Paul Egertson for describing himself as surprised when he was elected bishop of 152 congregations of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA).

“My identification with a minority position in the midst of the nationwide controversy made me think that a majority of delegates would not vote for (me),” he said.

Egertson, 59, has been well-known to Southern California Lutherans for his continuing education work at Cal Lutheran University in Thousand Oaks, but he has also been a part-time pastor for two years at St. Matthew’s parish in North Hollywood, which has publicly welcomed gay and lesbian congregants since 1985.

“We were shocked--we thought there was no chance of his being elected because our church is known for including gay people,” said Michael Nelson, who chairs St. Matthew’s evangelism committee. “We are sad to lose him because Dr. Egertson has brought us an expansive view of the Gospel, just lately getting us to start a ministry to the deaf.”

Egertson told delegates during last Saturday’s balloting that his oldest son was denied ordination after graduating from a Lutheran seminary because of ELCA policies barring non-celibate homosexuals from the ministry.

At that point, Egertson was one of three remaining candidates in the convention to fill a post vacated by Bishop J. Roger Anderson, who became pastor of a church in Arizona. Egertson went on to win the six-year term as bishop on the seventh ballot, 222-201, over the Rev. William Bartlett of Laguna Hills.

In the opinion of Cal Lutheran President Luther Luedtke, Egertson was elected neither because of nor in spite of his position on gays and lesbians.

“He’s a man of extraordinary compassion who has had long experience in ministry as a pastor and in continuing theological education,” Luedtke said.

Egertson has been pastor of three churches, including Faith Lutheran in South Gate and St. Timothy’s in Lakewood, and directed Cal Lutheran-based theological extension curricula for ministers and lay people from 1979 to 1992.

Luedtke said the Southern California (West) Synod of ELCA could not be classified as predominantly liberal or conservative.

“What distinguishes this synod is a cultural and social diversity that has moved us far beyond the Northern European stereotype to a cosmopolitan community,” said Luedtke, a former administrator at USC.

Bishop-elect Egertson said in an interview he recognizes divisions within the denomination are too deep to change church positions on sexuality at present.

That was evident a year ago when angry parish reactions poured in to the Chicago headquarters of ELCA when a draft statement on sexual mores proposed recommending that sexually active teen-agers use condoms, that non-compulsive masturbation is healthy and that the church should re-examine traditional disapproval of committed gay and lesbian couples.

The response led to preparation of a second, more traditional draft, released last month, that says the Bible teaches that sex between people of the same gender “is not in accordance with God’s will.”

Nevertheless, the draft also called for respect for gay and lesbian people and for their civil rights. While continuing present policies, the church will further study and discuss the issues, the draft said.

“The theological work necessary to undergird a change in our church has yet to be done,” Egertson said. The first draft was written by a task force broadly representative of the church’s membership, but the group did not have enough biblical and theological scholars, he said.

Egertson, who may be installed as bishop about Feb. 1, said he will address the subject “at those times when it’s appropriate.”

Egertson said he and his wife, Shirley, were confronted by the issue 15 years ago when the oldest of their six sons, Greg, said he was gay. “He changed the way we thought about homosexuality.”

The son, now an administrator at Golden Gate University in San Francisco who confirmed the bishop-elect’s account, studied for the ministry at Pacific Lutheran Seminary in Berkeley in the late 1980s despite scant hope that the new ELCA, the product of a three-way church merger in 1988, would suddenly modify its criteria for ordination.

“Five of my boys are heterosexual, but nobody’s interested in that,” the bishop-elect said good-humoredly, referring to news interviews this week.

Egertson continues to conduct Sunday services at 100-member St. Matthew’s, where a support ministry for people with HIV infections and AIDS was organized last spring. He led a memorial service at the church Wednesday night for a victim of AIDS.

The Rev. Mary Jensen, pastor of the Church of Hope in Canyon Country, said the election of her friend of 15 years was “a terrific choice.”

She pointed out that Egertson, who holds a doctorate from the School of Theology at Claremont, recently took law school courses at Pepperdine University to become certified in “alternative dispute resolution” to assist in arbitration and mediation outside the court system.

“That’s training that is certainly going to help him as a bishop too,” Jensen added.