c. 2007 Religion News Service

WASHINGTON _ The Evangelical Lutheran Church in America may be asked to change a ban on practicing gay and lesbian clergy after a disciplinary committee voted to remove an openly gay pastor but suggested the church find a way to reinstate him.

The ruling called for the Rev. Bradley Schmeling, an openly gay pastor in a committed relationship, to be removed from his pulpit at St. John’s Lutheran Church in Atlanta by Aug. 15. The committee said it reached the decision reluctantly and suggested the ELCA’s Churchwide Assembly in August should “reconsider and revise” guidelines prohibiting gay clergy who are not celibate.

The committee, made up of 12 Lutheran pastors from across the country, also recommended the assembly consider reinstating pastors who have been ousted from their positions for being in committed homosexual relationships.

Emily Eastwood, executive director of the Lutheran gay rights group Lutherans Concerned/North America, called the ruling “astounding and unprecedented.”

“This is not about the removal (of Schmeling),” she said. “If he had been acquitted or censured we would have dodged a bullet in this one case, but, since the decision calls for his removal at a specific time and calls for a change within that time frame, we have an opportunity to change the policy outright.”

“It’s much better not to dodge the bullet only for this one,” she added.

In an open letter to his parish, which was largely supportive during the case, Schmeling said he thought the policy of the church was wrong and needed to be changed, though he acknowledged that “change never comes without a struggle.”

“My sexual orientation and my partnered status shouldn’t preclude me from serving the church,” he wrote.

ELCA spokesman John Brooks said he could not comment on the case because both Schmeling and Atlanta Bishop Ronald Warren, who began the disciplinary proceedings against Schmeling, still have 30 days to appeal the decision.

At the church’s last national meeting, in 2005, ELCA delegates defeated a move to allow practicing gay and lesbian clergy, and upheld a 1993 policy banning same-sex marriage.

The Rev. Mark Chavez, director of WordAlone, a conservative Lutheran group based in Minnesota that supports the ban on actively gay clergy, said the committee’s decision is “further evidence that many of the leaders of the ELCA are convinced that they can disregard the authority of God’s word and, especially, the word as revealed in the scriptures of the Old and New Testament that clearly proscribes homosexual behavior.”

Chavez said it was “very disappointing” that ELCA leaders would try to push the denomination “in the direction of the Episcopalian Church, the Presbyterian Church USA and the United Church of Christ.”

KRE/RB END BOYLE