Author Archives: Obie Holmen

Lutheran Gay Clergy Retreat

In 1990, a pair of Lutheran congregations in the “Castro”, the San Francisco neighborhood called the “gay capitol of the world”, ordained an openly gay man and a lesbian couple. That was the start of Lutheran Gay and Lesbian Ministries. Later renamed Extraordinary Lutheran Ministries (ELM), this agency would ordain and roster over thirty gay and lesbian Lutheran ministry candidates because the ELCA refused to do so. Of course, ELCA policy changed with the momentous churchwide assembly of 2009.

So, what should ELM do now? A new course was charted for ELM at their January board meeting.

Far from feeling it was time to close our doors; we concluded that by creating a network for publicly-identified LGBTQ rostered leaders in a major Protestant denomination, we can participate in changing the church and transforming society. Furthermore, we concluded that we are strongly positioned to provide much needed support to LGBTQ people seeking to become rostered leaders in the Lutheran church. LGBTQ people know what it is like to be on the margins of the church. Through their ministry, LGBTQ rostered leaders are poised to offer an evangelical outreach to many and to work alongside others longing to be connected to a church that truly welcomes all.

ELM will soon be hosting a workshop/retreat at Stony Brook Conference Center in New York. Here are the details, cut and pasted from the ELM website:

The Proclaim retreat is a gathering of publicly identified LGBTQ rostered leaders and seminarians for a time of renewal, community building, and professional development. The 2012 retreat will be held at Stony Point Center, New York, April 18-21. Our keynote speaker is Episcopal Bishop Gene Robinson, who will join us for most of the retreat.

This retreat is open to members of Proclaim, significant others, and children 3 and under. For information on joining Proclaim go here.

The retreat begins with dinner on Wednesday evening and concludes with lunch on Saturday.

More about the Event:

This retreat will be the second gathering of Proclaim. We will gather together and embrace what it means to be publicly identified leaders as we care for ourselves, as we live in and amongst our communities, and as we serve as public witness to the Gospel.

The keynote speaker this year is Bishop Gene Robinson, the current bishop of the New England diocese of the Episcopalian church. Bp. Robinson is the first publicly identified gay person to be elected bishop in a major Christian denomination. His story is featured in the 2007 feature-length documentary, “For the Bible Tells Me So,” and his book In the Eye of the Storm: Swept to the Center by God (Seabury Books, New York) was released in 2008.

Program:

Here is a sample of sessions and discussion items for our time together:

What is the banquet that we are invited to? What motivates/propels us forward? What feeds our souls?

Discuss how LGBTQ leaders can shape and reshape church and community in the present and into the future.

Examine how LGBTQ leaders are a gift to the church.

Offer opportunities for LGBTQ leaders to hone and sharpen skills for ministry.

Create a vision of what this community and church might look like in 10 years–when we are all moving/going together.

Registration is OPEN. Go here to register.

Registration Deadline is March 16, 2012.

If you have questions, please contact Rachael Johnson, operations@elm.org

Tampa, Washington & Chicago: hope to see you there

Here are three upcoming events that I’m marking on my schedule. Perhaps a reader or two will decide to attend, but all of you should follow from afar.

April 24 – May 4: United Methodist General Conference, Tampa, Florida

The national (international) convention of United Methodists only convenes every four years. Thus, when they do gather, there is a lot of business to take care of. The first week consists of committee meetings and hearings, and the plenary sessions take place the second week.

The Methodists are the largest of the “mainline” Protestant denominations with over 8 million members. For comparison, the ELCA has around 4 million, the Episcopal and Presbyterian churches slightly over 2 million each, and the UCC slightly over 1 million. Of these five denominations, the Methodists are the remaining holdout for ordaining gay clergy, and that will certainly be the issue at the forefront of the upcoming General Convention.

The Methodists are also the most international of the American denominations. While the ELCA belongs to the worldwide Lutheran Federation, that is not a governing body that decides ELCA policy. The same is true with the Episcopalians who are part of the worldwide Anglican Communion. But, within the polity of the UMC, their international sister congregations and conferences are not mere affiliates but actually belong inside the denomination; thus there will be large numbers of international delegates to the upcoming General Convention.

This is also a significant part of the reason why the UMC has not yet voted to ordain gay clergy—the international delegates tend to be much more conservative than the US delegates. The principal gay advocacy group within the UMC is the Reconciling Ministries Network, and I recently visited with Troy Plummer, their executive director, and Pastor Bonnie Beckonchrist, their board chair. Both are cautiously optimistic about prospects for favorable legislation in Tampa, but suggest it will take nearly 65% favorable vote from the US delegates to bring the total margin to 50% or better.

I’m hoping to be there for the plenary sessions to do some live blogging.

June 25 – 28: UCC Coalition National Gathering, Elmhurst College, Illinois

The United Church of Christ has the most progressive history regarding gay inclusion of any of the five principal mainline denominations. The UCC Coalition is their advocacy arm, and this year’s national gathering will be historic. In June, 1972 openly gay seminarian William Johnson was ordained in a UCC conference in northern California, and this year’s gathering will celebrate the 40th anniversary of his ordination. Elmhurst College of Elmhurst, Illinois (a west Chicago suburb) will host the gathering and will also be the home of The William B. Johnson “Guestship”.

Elmhurst College has named its annual LGBT Guestship in honor of an esteemed alumnus, the Reverend Dr. William R. Johnson. A member of the Class of 1968, Johnson is a United Church of Christ minister and vice president for member relations of the UCC’s Council for Health and Human Service Ministries. In 1972, he became the first openly gay person in modern history to gain ordination to the mainstream Christian ministry.

“For four decades, he has worked tirelessly and effectively on behalf of the rights and dignity of all people and, in particular, of LGBT people of faith and their loved ones,” said President S. Alan Ray in announcing the William R. Johnson Guestship. “He has provided counsel and support to hundreds of LGBT seminarians and clergy in the UCC and beyond.” Ray noted that a scholarship in Johnson’s name supports openly gay UCC seminarians studying for parish ministry.

July 6 – 10: Biennial Assembly of Lutherans Concerned, Washington, D.C.

I attended the 2010 Biennial in Minneapolis, and I hope to attend this year also. In 2010, LCNA celebrated the momentous changes at the ECLA Churchwide Assembly of 2009. The preacher during the primary worship service was former NY Synod Bishop Stephen Bouman, who currently works within the ELCA home office as Executive Director of Congregational and Synodical Mission. His participation symbolized that gays and their advocates were now insiders, and Bouman’s sermon encouraged LCNA to use their gifts of advocacy for those who remain on the margins, especially the immigrant.

This year, the symbolism will be heightened as the keynote address will be given by none other than Mark Hanson, the Presiding Bishop of the ELCA.

Reconciling Works 2012 is more than a conference. It is an opportunity to explore and live out the work of reconciliation that we are called to do. Justice requires reconciliation, and reconciliation takes effort. Throughout our time together, we will work on justice issues from the intersection of oppressions (racism, sexism, ablism, etc.) and through the lens of full participation of people of all sexual orientations and gender identities in the life of the Lutheran Church.

We’ll worship together, using a rich variety of traditions of the worshipping community. We’ll provide a blend of the familiar and the unique drawing on our Lutheran heritage and the wealth of liturgical practice in the area. We’ll network with one another, hear stories of joy and frustration, and make decisions together about the future direction of Lutherans Concerned / North America and our Reconciling in Christ communities.

Bringing down the “fat man”

Humphrey Bogart, reprising the role of detective Sam Spade in The Maltese Falcon, battled evil in the Sidney Greenstreet character of Kaspar Gutman, aka “the fat man”. Though bested by Bogart’s character, “the fat man” slipped away to Istanbul, no doubt to prepare for a sequel.

What about real life? Can college coed Sandra Fluke bring down the fat man of conservative radio: the bombastic, foul-mouthed, mean-spirited Rush Limbaugh? Have his comments degenerated beyond chronic bad taste into the legal realm of slander?

Sandra Fluke is the law student from Georgetown University who was prepared to offer testimony before the Issa Committee on contraception, but she was excluded and only five conservative men were allowed to speak. Later, she was invited back and offered testimony to a House Democratic committee. She testified in favor of health insurance coverage that included contraceptives without a co-pay.

It was her testimony before that committee that caused Limbaugh to become ballistic.

What does it say about the college coed Susan [sic] Fluke, who goes before a congressional committee and essentially says that she must be paid to have sex? What does that make her? It makes her a slut, right? It makes her a prostitute. She wants to be paid to have sex.

In my former law practice, I never handled a slander case, but I know they are generally very difficult to pursue, especially against public figures. But I hope she does it. I hope she sues the blathering idiot.

We could echo journalist Edward R. Murrow’s ringing challenge to a fat man bully of an earlier time, Joseph McCarthy–Have you no decency?— but in the case of Rush Limbaugh, the answer is only too clear.

Santorum says I’m not a Christian

Of course, he doesn’t know me. We’ve never talked, and I doubt he’s read any of my writing, though I ‘d be delighted to send him a copy of A Wretched Man with the hopes that he publicly disses it. I’d send him a copy of Prowl, too, but that might offend his piety because the book drops a few ffenheimers. But, he knows I’m not a Christian because I’m a self-avowed, unrepentant, practicing liberal. What is more, I’m all about sex, because I’m a Democrat. From the 2008 interview in which he suggested that liberals could not be Christian:

Woodstock is the great American orgy. This is who the Democratic Party has become. They have become the party of Woodstock. The prey upon our most basic primal lusts, and that’s sex. And the whole abortion culture, it’s not about life. It’s about sexual freedom. That’s what it’s about. Homosexuality. It’s about sexual freedom.

I’m sorry I missed Woodstock, but I was preoccupied dodging bullets and feeling scared, homesick, and abandoned in the jungles of Vietnam. I was pretty much celibate in those days, too, so I’m not quite sure why Santorum thinks I’m oversexed. I’ll ask my wife what she thinks.

Isn’t the sanctimonious, “we’re Christians, but you’re not”, what we really dislike most about the religious right? Well, I take that back; there are too many delicious absurdities to rank them.

I’m back!!

Well, at least for the moment.

I have been pouring hours and hours into my book project, Gays in the Pulpit. My working draft is now over 170 pages, which is probably half. And the stories! And the people!

Chicago is home to Reconciling Ministries Network—the Methodist LGBTQ advocacy group–and I have visited with Troy Plummer (their director), Pastor Bonnie Beckonchrist (their board chair), Pastor Morris Floyd (activist in the 80’s and 90’s), and Mark Bowman (original founder). Bowman is also the director of LGBTran Archives, which contains biographies and more about leading LGBTQ icons. Turns out I already knew Steve Webster of Madison, Wisconsin who organized the first Methodist gay caucus back in 1975.

Thanks to these excellent resources, my draft includes chapters covering the Methodist history up to around 2000. The Methodists are the remaining holdout among the five principal mainline Protestant denominations. The others (ELCA, Presbyterian, Episcopal, and United Church of Christ) all ordain gay clergy, but the upcoming UMC quadrennial General Conference may change that. It’s close, with US delegates firmly on board, but because the UMC also has delegations from Africa, the Philippines, and elsewhere who tend to be very conservative vis a vis LGBTQ issues, the US delegates may need around 65% positive to offset the likely 90% negative from outside the US. The Conference is scheduled the end of April in Tampa, and I’m thinking I may attend and do some live-blogging as I did during the historic ELCA Assembly in 2009.

I am also up to around the year 2000 in my ELCA chapters. Chicago is home to both the ELCA archives and the Lutherans Concerned (LCNA) archives. I recently returned to Minnesota and had a delightful lunch with Ruth Frost and Phyllis Zillhart of the famous extra ordinem ordinations in San Francisco in 1990, and I have been in email correspondence with Pastor Jim Siefkes (who organized the first Lutheran gay caucus back in 1974), Jeannine Janson (who compiled a booklet containing early LCNA history), Amalia Vagts (the director of Extraordinary Lutheran Ministries), and others.

Louie Crew, the founder of the Episcopal group Integrity, has been very helpful during phone conversations and email correspondence. His stories also go back to the mid 1970’s. I have exchanged emails with Ellen Marie Barrett, the first Episcopal lesbian priest way back in 1977, who provided a poignant look back at the pain of rejection but also the triumph—“I am a priest forever!” My Episcopal chapters go to around 1990.

The Presbyterians and the UCC still require a lot of work—those chapters only cover the very early 1970’s. I have been in touch with More Light Presbyterians and the UCC Coalition, but I now need to follow up on the leads they have provided. Retired dean of the United Theological Seminary Clyde Steckel has been helpful with early information about the UCC. Trips to Cleveland and Drew University in New Jersey are likely in the offing, which is where many key persons and records are located.

In addition to these contacts, I have also kept the nearby Arlington Heights Library busy with dozens of inter-library loan requests. Many official records of national church conventions are available online as well.

Gays in the Pulpit

I have several writing projects underway. I recently posted about Prowl, a compilation of five short stories based upon my Vietnam experience. I have also been working on a sequel to A Wretched Man. Third, last spring I started work on a non-fiction piece, tentatively titled Gays in the Pulpit, which will be a forty-year retrospective on the gay rights movement within the church. Now that we are settled into our new digs in Arlington Heights, I have again picked up that project in earnest.

I am personally acquainted with many of the more recent heroes of the push for full inclusion including Lutherans Anita Hill, Ruth Frost, Phyllis Zillhart, and Emily Eastwood; United Methodist Amy Delong; and Presbyterian Scott Anderson. If you click on their names, you will link to prior blog posts about these individuals.

My current research is also introducing me to earlier heroes. In 1968, Troy Perry was a gay Baptist/Pentecostal preacher who founded the Metropolitan Community Church, which now numbers over 250 predominantly gay congregations internationally. Father Robert Mary Clement was a gay priest who marched in the first gay pride parade in Greenwich Village and whose Beloved Disciple Church ministered to the gay community of New York City in the early ‘70s. Bill Johnson was the first openly gay man ordained by an established denomination way back in 1972 by the United Church of Christ. Ellen Barrett was the first out lesbian to become an Episcopal priest in 1977.

As I am reviewing the data from these early days, I have received invaluable assistance from Rev. Clyde Steckel, retired dean of the United Seminary of the Twin Cities. Rev. Steckel was witness to and participant in the UCC steps toward gay inclusion in the ‘70s. The record in the UCC is striking because they were so far ahead of the other mainline denominations. The UCC accomplishments in the 1970s foreshadowed the actions of the Episcopalians, Lutherans, Presbyterians, and Methodists a full generation later.

More to come.

Gays in the Pulpit

More to come.

Eleven Eleven Eleven

The eleventh day of the eleventh month of the eleventh year happens once a century. On November 11, 1911, the progressive former President Teddy Roosevelt was discovering that the increasingly conservative Republican Party no longer welcomed his moderate views about regulating corporations. Hmmm.

Coincidentally, today is also Veteran’s Day, which derives from the signing of the peace at the conclusion of WWI on the “eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month” of 1918.

I don’t remember Veterans Day in 1969, and I doubt whether my fellow soldiers in Vietnam paid much attention. By then, the drawdown of troops had begun even as the war protests in the US accelerated. On November 3rd, President Nixon had delivered his famous “silent majority” speech, and on November 15th, over a quarter million protesters descended upon Washington for the largest anti-war protest in US history. Just as we were oblivious to Veteran’s Day, my comrades in K Company Rangers stationed at Camp Enari near Pleiku paid little attention to speeches and protests back home. We had more immediate issues, and for us the geo-political ramifications of the war were of little concern. It was around that time in 1969 that Ranger team 18 was formed—call sign Romeo one eight–consisting of (left to right) Billy Powers, yours truly, Mark Estopare, and Gary Heald. The four of us stayed together as a team for four or five months.

Some of you know that I have published five short stories based upon our experiences, and today I announce the release of a compilation of the five in a book entitled Prowl. Prowl is available as a Kindle eBook or paperback here, or in other eBook formats here.

The title is based upon the following passage:

Survival depended upon stealth. The black and brown stripes smeared across our faces matched our tiger fatigues, and we prowled silently and slowly. Unseen and unheard, we would be hunter and not hunted.

In slow motion, I lifted my combat boot over a rotting branch and gingerly stepped to the soft ground on the opposite side. Momentarily straddling the fallen limb, I scanned the brush from left to right before dropping my gaze to the forest floor ahead to plan for my next footfall. When I was satisfied, I shifted my weight forward and lifted my trailing foot over the branch. Again and again, the methodical process was repeated as I silently crept through tall ferns, low-hanging vines, and suspended air plants of a mountain valley in the central highlands of Vietnam. Behind me in five to ten yard intervals, my three Ranger teammates mimicked my actions. LRRPs on patrol.

We stalked men from the north, soldiers of the North Vietnamese Army, searching for signs of their highways or hooches, hidden from the eyes of our helicopters by triple canopy jungle. But who stalked us?

In the branches above, a noisy flock of flycatchers bobbed and weaved for bugs, while the seed-eating finches flitted here and there in the low grass and brush; the birds didn’t notice us nor we them. Birdsongs and chattering squirrels said all was as it should be; silence would sound an alarm.

The Power of Woman

As a former attorney, I appreciate the line of Charles Dickens spoken by Mr. Bumble, the law is a ass. In the context of the novel, Oliver Twist, Mr. Bumble recognized that his own wife was more powerful than he in their marriage relationship, and the patriarchal presumptions of the olde English common law were false.

The first half of the twentieth century witnessed the successful struggle for woman’s suffrage, and during the second half the women’s liberation movement achieved notable social and legal successes. To be sure, the victory is not yet won, and pay inequality in the workplace is an obvious example of residual sexism in our culture.

So too the church. Except for a bright, shining moment in the earliest days of the Jesus movement, the men have been in control until recently. Contemporaneous with the women’s movement in secular society, the role of women in the church has changed, and the wide advance of female clergy is eloquent testimony; yet, in my own ELCA, only a handful of women have yet been elected to the episcopate, which remains mostly but not exclusively male. This weekend, I will travel to South Bend, Indiana to attend an Episcopal Diocesan Convention, and the honored guest of the Northern Indiana Diocese will be the Most Reverend Katherine Jefforts Schori, the presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church in the USA, who is the first and only female to head a major Christian denomination in the US.

Though female leadership in the church is not yet completely de jure, along with Mr. Bumble I recognize the de facto power of women. Theological critics of the 2009 pro-gay actions of the ELCA are right in one thing—it was the women’s movement in the church a generation ago that set the stage for the recent successes of the gay rights movement: a “slippery slope” some would claim, but I prefer the metaphor of opening the door.

History repeats itself and not always in a negative way. The civil war in Northern Ireland finally ended when Protestant and Catholic women said enough. More recently, the women of Liberia rose up and ousted the corrupt Charles Taylor regime and elected a female as the first head of state in an African nation.

One of the Liberian women leaders was Leymah Roberta Gbowee, a Lutheran and the keynote speaker at the Women of the ELCA Triennial Convention in Spokane this summer. Earlier, she had been a scholarship recipient through the International Leadership Development Program of the ELCA in 2006-2007 to support her study in peace building at Eastern Mennonite University in Harrisonburg, Va. An announcement from Oslo, Norway this week named Gbowee as a co-winner, with two other women, of the Nobel Peace Prize.

The following is from an ELCA press release:

The starting point of the women’s movement was war fatigue, said Gbowee, a mother of six children. She grew tried of watching children die from hunger and “waking up every morning and not knowing whether a tomorrow was possible. You can’t plan for the future.” Along with thousands of other women from across Liberia, Gbowee wanted to dream of a better community.

She decided it was time to stop the war and called together women of all faiths — Christian, Muslim, indigenous and others — from across Liberia to “step out,” recognizing that Liberian women can play a critical role in peace building.

Using the experiences of the women before them, Gbowee used prayer, picketing and silence to further their mission. Despite insults and other behaviors that came their way, Gbowee said, “We kept quiet because we had a sense of purpose and sense of direction.” The women also put together statements of peace for African governments, engaged the media and initiated personal, one-to-one conversations with power brokers “to see how we could get the peace that Liberia was searching for,” she said.

“Leymah Gbowee’s life and leadership are a witness to the power of women to resist forces of violence and domination by creating a movement for reconciliation and peace,” said ELCA Presiding Bishop Mark S. Hanson. “In Liberia, I experienced her passionate commitment to rebuilding a nation torn by civil war not by seeking vengeance, but through her faith to encourage dialogue and inclusiveness at all levels of society.”

Bumble concluded his soliloquy: the law is a bachelor; and the worst I wish the law is that his eye may be opened by experience—by experience.

Home in Arlington Heights

The Village of Arlington Heights began to take shape in the 1850’s when a New York land speculator persuaded the railroad to build a terminal in the local farming community consisting of recent German immigrants. The railroad allowed the farmers to ship their produce to the far-off city of Chicago, twenty-five miles to the south and east. Originally the town of Dunston, the Village of Arlington Heights was incorporated in the 1880’s.

Today, Arlington Heights boasts a population of 75,000, a “Village” budget in excess of $60 million annually, and the railroad terminal is now a popular waypoint along a spoke of the “Metra” light rail that delivers commuters into the Chicago hub. Downtown Arlington Heights consists of fine shops, restaurants, Yoga studios, theaters, high-rise luxury apartments and other indicators of an affluent community. Several of you who sent well-wishes noted personal connections with this area.

We have rented a century-old, four-bedroom (all small) house just a block away from downtown. We can see the Metra trains pass by from our spacious porch. I have set up my new office in a cheery sunroom that catches the morning sun and from which I can watch the teenagers next door play frisbee. We have received welcoming gifts of chili, sweets, and salads from several of the neighbors who were pleased to learn that we hold a humorous disdain for our fellow Minnesotan, Michelle Bachmann.

Yesterday, we visited the 2,300 member Our Saviour’s Lutheran Church just a few blocks up Arlington Heights Road. I nudged my wife as Senior Pastor Dan Hoeger offered the morning announcements.

“I know him from somewhere,” I said.

After the service, we confirmed that we had met a year ago at the Lutherans Concerned Convention at Augsburg College in Minneapolis. Our Saviour’s just concluded a congregational advisory survey in which 82% voted to authorize the pastors and the congregation to bless same-gender unions.

So, we’re settling in. We still have a few boxes to unpack, and I need to get untracked with my writing. Several projects have languished in recent months, but now it’s time. Thanks to all who sent comments to this blog or private emails wishing us well in our new adventure. I will be returning to host a series of retreats in Minnesota in upcoming weeks, and I hope to see many of you then.