Herbert W. Chilstrom: Change is hard, but it will come

Dear Charlotte:

I was deeply moved by your article "An Unavoidable Truth" in the Sept. 16 Star Tribune. Among other things, you rightfully take the churches and their leaders to task for being a partner in bringing so much pain to persons who are gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender.

I wonder, however, if you have any idea what it's like to be one of those church leaders who are often singled out for criticism. Maybe it would help if I told you my story:

I spent my boyhood in Litchfield, 70 miles west of the Twin Cities. Neither the schools nor the churches nor my family gave me any sex education. It all came from my friends. And some of it was not good.

The buzz among my buddies was that there were some men who got together at a certain place in town to engage in some strange sexual activity. We stayed as far away from that spot as possible. Whatever they did, we knew it must be shameful and immoral. As for a woman being attracted to another woman, it was completely off our radar screens.

At Augsburg College in the early 1950s, I majored in sociology, which included courses in marriage and family. Sexual behavior of any kind, straight or gay, was not part of the curriculum.

At seminary, there was nothing on the subject. When I did my doctoral work at New York University in the 1960s, I took some elective courses on marriage and family. Again, nothing on the subject of sex.

I was teaching college students in New Jersey at the time and developed a course on marriage and family. I included lectures on sexual behavior, including rather specific information on sex before and after marriage. But nothing on homosexuality. Why? Because I knew little or nothing about it.

Until my mid 40s, I had only one solitary conversation with a gay person -- a student who wanted advice and counsel. I suggested that he pray and see a clinical psychologist. I was certain he would become "normal." When he left campus a week later, I wrote him off as a failure. I was certain he could have been "cured."

In 1976 all this began to change. I was elected bishop of the Minnesota Synod of the Lutheran Church in America. One of the first issues to hit my desk was a referendum in St. Paul about civil rights for gay and lesbian persons. What stance should I take? Though I was somewhat reluctant, it seemed only fair to support the cause.

That led to a life-changing event. A group of young Lutheran men invited my wife and me to meet with them at a lovely older home in St. Paul. We didn't really want to go. But we had no good excuse not to do so. After all, they were members of Lutheran congregations in our synod.

That night we listened to heart-wrenching stories we have heard a thousand times since.

• No, they did not choose to be gay.

• No, their mothers were not domineering.

• No, they had not been abused.

• Yes, they had pleaded with God for change.

• Yes, they had tried marriage as a "cure."

• Yes, they had spent thousands of dollars on reparative therapy, to no avail.

Over the next decade I worked hard to try to engage congregations in the synod in study of the issue, to meet gay and lesbian persons, to study the Scriptures. It was a discouraging venture. At times the volatility in the room was so intense that my wife feared for my safety. But I pressed ahead, certain that we needed to face the issue head-on.

In 1987, I was elected the first presiding bishop of the newly formed Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA). By now congregations were more eager to study the question.

Study is one thing. Change is another. Some bishops were ready for a new day; others were (and still are) adamantly opposed to any reconsideration of the church's traditional stance:

• We should not bless faithful, same-gender relationships.

• We should exclude persons in such relationships from the ordained ministry.

I left office in 1995, thinking that I would put my energies into other matters. But folks around the country knew of my involvement in this issue and kept asking me to give Bible studies and lectures on the question. At times I was out two and three times a month in some corner of the country, trying to help folks see that our use of the Bible to condemn homosexual persons had been a perversion of the good news of grace and acceptance that God wants all to hear.

I know from experience that it's not easy for pastors and bishops to take controversial stands. At a time when budgets are stretched to the limit and demands for new programs are raised at congregational and synod and national meetings, who wants to lose the support of faithful givers who differ on these matters?

The good news for you, Charlotte, and for others, is that change is happening. Much too slowly, to be sure. But it is happening.

At the recent national assembly of the ELCA, delegates decided not to change the rule that excludes persons in same-gender relationships from the ordained ministry. That was disappointing. That same assembly, however, urged bishops to use pastoral discretion and reservation in disciplining pastors known to be in faithful same-gender relationships.

A small step. But it gives some of us reason to hope that one of these days our church, like the United Church of Christ and a handful of others, will take the big step and wipe out all restrictions for those in such faithful partnerships, assuming they are qualified on all other grounds.

Once that happens, it will herald a new day in some of our Lutheran churches. Then we will have some models of commitment between same-gender persons, just as we now have them from pastors in traditional marriages.

I'm sorry we're not there yet, Charlotte. I hope, however, that you and other gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender persons will not lose heart.

We need you.

Herbert W. Chilstrom, St. Peter, Minn., is the former presiding bishop of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America.