SAN FRANCISCO — Seven pastors who work in the San Francisco Bay area and were barred from serving in the nation’s largest Lutheran group because of a policy that required homosexual clergy to be celibate are being welcomed into the denomination.
The Evangelical Lutheran Church in America will add six of the pastors to its clergy roster at a service at St. Mark’s Lutheran Church in San Francisco today.
Another pastor who was expelled from the church but later reinstated, will participate in the service.
The group is among the first gay Lutheran pastors to be reinstated or added to the rolls of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America since the organization voted last year to lift the policy requiring celibacy.
Churches can now hire noncelibate gay clergy who are in committed relationships.
The special rite of reception that will be used for the first time today was developed specifically to welcome homosexual pastors, said Melissa Ramirez Cooper, a spokesman for the Lutheran group.
Two more rite of reception services are scheduled for September in the St. Paul-Minneapolis area, and another will follow in Chicago, Cooper said.
Front Section, Pages 10 on 07/25/2010