ELCA ELECTS GAY BISHOP

In what we all knew would come in time has come relatively sooner than expected.  A gay ELCA clergyman and professor has been elected Bishop.  You can read it all below.  Note the following anomalies:  first he has been a pastor in the ELCA for twenty years, serving congregations of the ELCA BUT without ordination -- a protest against the then restrictive policies against the ordination of actively gay and lesbian candidates.  So he served as a "lay" pastor?!?!?   Second note that he has been ordained as a pastor for only two years so this represents a rather quick climb up the hierarchical ladder and signifies that he was not necessarily chosen as the best of all candidates but to make a particular statement.  Some have been frustrated that the world did not change overnight and the ranks of leadership fill with gay and lesbian clergy once the ELCA lifted the ban in 2009.  So, some have argued, this step represents the full implementation of that change nearly 4 years ago... and not quickly enough for many within that church body.  So the ELCA joins its partner church body the Episcopal Church in now having gay clergy represented at every level of church leadership.  While this is something some would celebrate, it represents, in the eyes of this writer, a sad day for Lutheranism in the USA.

Read below:

The Reverend Dr. R. Guy Erwin was elected bishop of the Southwest California Synod of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA) on the sixth ballot becoming the first publicly-identified gay and first Native American bishop in the history of the twenty-five year old denomination.

Erwin’s election to bishop comes just two years after his ordination as pastor in the church. Erwin has served congregations in the ELCA for over twenty years but chose not to be ordained until the ELCA changed its policy regarding gay and lesbian ministers. The Evangelical Lutheran Church in America voted in 2009 to ordain gay and lesbian people in publicly accountable, lifelong committed same-gender relationships. Erwin was one of the first publicly-identified gay pastors in the ELCA to be ordained after the 2009 changes. There were seventeen publicly-identified LGBTQ people who were extraordinarily ordained outside the regular ELCA process prior to the vote, and subsequently received onto the ELCA roster following 2009.

Erwin is a member of Proclaim, a professional association of 130 Lutheran pastors, rostered lay leaders and seminarians who publicly identify as LGBTQ. Proclaim is a program of Extraordinary Lutheran Ministries, a social ministry organization that supports LGBTQ pastors and their ministries. Bishop-elect Erwin also currently serves on the Extraordinary Lutheran Ministries Board of Directors....

Bishop-elect Erwin currently serves Faith Lutheran, Canoga Park as interim pastor and is Professor of Religion and History at California Lutheran University. Erwin is a native of Oklahoma and an active member of the Osage Tribe of Indians. Erwin and his partner Rob Flynn are members of St. Matthew’s Lutheran Church in North Hollywood, CA, and are very active in Lutheran circles locally, nationally, and internationally. He will be installed as bishop September 21, 2013 and will serve a six year term.