Defying Lutheran Doctrine, Churches Appoint Active Gays to the Ministry

The first of the three ministers, the Rev. Jennifer Mason, 41, is scheduled to be installed Sunday at Central City Lutheran Mission in San Bernardino, followed by the installation of the Rev. Daniel M. Hooper, 56, at Hollywood Lutheran Church on May 2 and the Rev. Jay Wiesner, 30, at Bethany Lutheran Church in Minneapolis on July 25.

The series of installations are once again focusing attention on divisions within the denomination over how to respond to gay men and lesbians in the clergy.

"The emotions run very high, and I think the risks are very real," said the Rev. Steven Benson, pastor of Bethany Lutheran Church. "The possibilities of deep division, and perhaps even schism, are there," said Benson, who backs the installation.

Bishop Murray D. Finck of the Lutheran Church's Pacific Synod, which includes San Bernardino, said he was surprised and saddened by the San Bernardino mission's decision to call Mason as associate pastor. He urged the mission to reconsider its decision before her scheduled installation.

The Evangelical Lutheran Church of America, the nation's fifth-largest Protestant denomination, with 10,700 affiliated churches and about 5 million members, ordains men and women with homosexual orientations, but requires them to be celibate.

The Hollywood Lutheran Church and the San Bernardino mission would be the first Southern California Evangelical Lutheran bodies to call an openly gay man or lesbian as a pastor.

A decade ago, the denomination expelled two churches in San Francisco for appointing clergy who were living in same-sex relationships. Since then, more than a dozen other churches in the denomination have appointed non-celibate gay men and lesbians as pastors, but the denomination has not tried to expel any additional churches.

The issue of gay men and lesbians in the clergy has split a number of the nation's largest Protestant denominations.

Last month, a United Methodist Church court near Seattle infuriated conservatives when it ruled that a lesbian pastor in an open same-sex relationship had not engaged in any "practices declared by the United Methodist Church to be incompatible with Christian teachings." A week before her trial, the pastor, the Rev. Karen Dammann, had flown to San Francisco with her partner and was married.