The nation’s largest Lutheran body, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, or ELCA, took another step Sunday toward claiming a major place at the forefront of faiths heeding the call to inclusivity and openness to all.  What took place in San Francisco is a direct result of the actions taken a year ago to allow gay and lesbian pastors to serve regardless of whether they are celibate.  The action was taken in a special “rite of reception.” Several others are expected this fall in Chicago and Minneapolis.

At the Lutheran convention in Minneapolis last Aug. 17-23, “the Human Sexuality: Gift and Trust” policy, developed by a 15-member task force, was adopted by precisely the required two-thirds necessary, or 676-338.  “Degrees of physical intimacy should be carefully matched to degrees of growing affection and commitment,” stated the document.  Still, the document called on the ELCA to oppose “non-monogamous, promiscuous or casual sexual relationships.”

Seven pastors who had once worked in Lutheran ministry in the Bay Area were reinstated Sunday to the rolls of the ELCA. The group became the first gay, bisexual or transgender Lutheran pastors reinstated to the ELCA since the 2009 vote to do away with the policy that required gay pastors to be celibate.  ”It was a day of mixed feelings for the ‘Bay Area Seven’ – the Revs. Jeff Johnson, Megan Rohrer, Paul Brenner, Craig Minich, Dawn Roginski Sharon Stalkfleet and Ross Merkel – who saw the event as an act of reconciliation with the church that once shunned them,” noted the SFGate Web site.

“Gay men and women were previously allowed to become Lutheran pastors but had to take a vow of celibacy,” the site said. “Some within the church saw the rule as discriminatory, and in 1990 two San Francisco churches, First United and St. Francis, defied the policy by ordaining  Johnson, a gay man, and a lesbian couple.”

The reconciliation came amid a “glorious and festive ceremony,” according to Amalia Vagts, executive director of the Extraordinary Lutheran Ministries, a nonprofit group that provides credentials for ministry to openly gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people.

The Associated Press focused on Megan Rohrer who had grown up in South Dakota and went to a Lutheran college “where 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.” The AP said that Rohrer, who is transgender and a lesbian, was ordained by four congregations in San Francisco in 2006.  Yet she was barred from becoming an ELCA pastor by the 20-year-old policy that was lifted last year.

“I didn’t really believe the policy was going to change as quickly as it did,” Rohrer said. Meanwhile, Jeff Johnson said the ELCA’s position for years to not allow congregations the choice to ordain gay clergy had been “painful and disappointing.”

The ELCA is expected to have congregations  moving to leave the denomination in defiance of last year’s vote to allow practicing gays and lesbians to serve in the ministry. Among other major denominations, the United Church of Christ most notably has dropped restrictions on pastors and their sexual orientation and practices.  In 2005, the UCC officially gave sanction to  same-sex marriage.  The ELCA has about 4.7 million members in about 10,400 congregations.  It is the seventh largest American denomination.

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