Evangelical Lutheran Church Reinstates Gay Clergy

In a move that will drive the Southern Baptist want to be Missouri Synod Lutherans to apoplexy, The larger and modernity embracing Evangelical Lutheran Church in America has reinstated six gay clergy who had previously been removed from the ranks of rostered clergy because they were in committed same sex relationships. More reinstatements are to follow. In my view, this is a wonderful occurrence and I hope more previously demonized gay clergy will find themselves reinstated within the ELCA. The irony in the whole partnered gay clergy issue is that evangelical Christians who are typically the most homophobic also have the highest divorce rate - they personify those who wear their religion on their sleeves, seek to inflict their religious beliefs on all, and then are utter hypocrites when it comes to their very selective application of Bible passages. Here are some highlights from the Plain Dealer:
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Seven pastors who work in the San Francisco Bay area and were barred from serving in the nation's largest Lutheran group because of a policy that required gay clergy to be celibate are being welcomed into the denomination.
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The Evangelical Lutheran Church in America will add six of the pastors to its clergy roster at a service at St. Mark's Lutheran Church in San Francisco on Sunday. Another pastor who was expelled from the church, but was later reinstated, will participate in the service.
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The group is among the first gay, bisexual or transgender Lutheran pastors to be reinstated or added to the rolls of the ELCA since the organization voted last year to lift the policy requiring celibacy.
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Megan Rohrer, one of the pastors who will participate in Sunday's rite of reception service, grew up in South Dakota and attended a Lutheran college where she said students tried to exorcise her "gay demons" by throwing holy water on her. Some of those people are now Lutheran pastors in South Dakota, she said.
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Rohrer, who is transgender and a lesbian, was ordained by four congregations in San Francisco in 2006, but could not join the ELCA roster until the denomination's national assembly approved the new policy in August.
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Jeff Johnson, another one of the pastors who will be added to the roster, said the ELCA's position for years of not accepting the choice of some congregations to ordain gay clergy was painful and disappointing. "The actions the church is taking on Sunday affirms the decisions of those congregations," Johnson, pastor of the University Lutheran Chapel in Berkeley, said. "The church is respecting our family, our partners, the choices we're making."
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The special rite of reception that will be used for the first time on Sunday was developed specifically to welcome gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender pastors, said Melissa Ramirez Cooper, a spokeswoman for the ELCA.
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Two more rite of reception services are scheduled for September in the St. Paul-Minneapolis area and another will follow in Chicago, Cooper said.