San Francisco Lutheran church to install gay pastor

Lutheran church to install gay pastor

Bay Area Reporter, (San Francisco)

St. Francis Lutheran Church in San Francisco will be the site this Sunday for installation of the Reverend Robert Goldstein as the church's new lead pastor.

The ceremony will officially combine the efforts of Goldstein and St. Francis' history of pioneering equal rights for LGBT people on a community level and within the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America.

St. Francis was one of two congregations expelled from the ELCA in 1995 because it ordained a gay man and a lesbian couple as pastors against church officials' wishes. By assuming the pastorate at St. Francis, Goldstein, who is openly gay, is chancing the same consequence. "I, too, am in conflict with the official ELCA clergy roster and may be removed after my third year," said Goldstein.

"But the vision of St. Francis to be a beacon of light of the inclusive gospel of Christ and to work to change the attitudes and policies of the wider Lutheran Church and other church bodies, as well as the vision to be a congregation of all the peoples of San Francisco and their children, is the future of Christianity. And I want to be part of the future," he said.

"The fact that my Chicago bishop will preach at my installation is a further sign of hope that there are many in the ELCA who want to stand with St. Francis. I am hopeful," he added.

Goldstein, 61, a native of Melbourne, Australia, arrived in San Francisco in early November 2005 and assumed his duties at St. Francis later that same month. He had previously served congregations in New Jersey and Chicago. He has been a pastor of the ELCA and its predecessor, the Lutheran Church in America, since 1975.

His journey from Australia and upward through the ranks of the church was a tedious one, fraught with all the obstacles one might expect for an openly gay man aspiring to be a minister.

"I was 14 when I knew for sure I was gay. Not long after, a daily local paper displayed the headline: 'Pervert Jailed.' This pushed my self-identity deeply inward for many years. Of course, Australia has come a long way since then."

"I arrived in the U.S. in 1962 at 18 years of age. A college education for a blue collar boy in Australia in those days was very limited, so I left high school, went to work and paid for passage to the United States and attended college in Texas."

"I was a deeply repressed gay man in macho Australia of the 1960s," he said. "I was married for 19 years until, after counseling, I finally faced the truth and came out to my wife and my bishop in New Jersey in 1987."

Goldstein said the result of his coming out was that he lost everything "except my faith in a God who honors integrity and self-honesty."

He said he was in "exile" in Kansas in 1990, when a church official from Chicago visited him and invited him back into the ministry despite strong opposition from some national church leaders.

After that he served in several churches and "guardedly" came out to colleagues and members with mixed results. In 1999, he became the first gay pastor to come out publicly at a church convention.

Then in 2000, Goldstein helped author a resolution asking the ELCA to grant full and equal rights to gay clergy in partnerships and inclusion in the rite of marriage. The resolution passed in Chicago and contributed to the ELCA beginning a churchwide study and dialogue on the issues.

"While not successful at the 2005 national assembly in Orlando, these measures for full inclusion garnered a 49 percent vote. So, we keep on the struggle," he said.

Goldstein said he decided to interview for the position at St. Francis due to that church's "warm and loving relationship with the San Francisco gay community and its prophetic stand for full rights for LGBT people."

Phyllis Zillhart and Ruth Frost, a lesbian couple, were ordained as clergy by St. Francis in 1990. ELCA officials had not approved the two because they would not commit to lifelong abstention from same-sex sexual relationships.

Since that time, St. Francis has been an independent Lutheran organization that has a voice – but not a vote – in ELCA functions.

St. Francis is a result of a 1964 merger of Danish and Finnish Lutheran congregations founded a century ago, according to church officials. Its present building dates from 1905.

The church, located at 152 Church Street, began to openly welcome LGBT worshippers in the 1970s. The congregation grew in numbers and took on new life and leadership in the controversies that followed with the ELCA in issues relating to homosexuality.

Goldstein's installation will take place on Sunday, March 26, at 2:30 p.m. St. Francis is located at 152 Church Street in San Francisco, near the intersection of Church, Market, and 14th streets, across from   Safeway.