Gay Bishop Reflects Evolution of Evangelical Lutheran Church

Almost 20 years ago, I devoted a long column in The Kansas City Star to an interview with two local pastors, both in the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, a Mainline Protestant denomination.

The ELCA was then debating whether to change its rules to allow the ordination of LGBTQIA+ people as clergy. The Rev. Donna Simon, who then was sort of an ELCA pastor and an out lesbian (I’ll explain the “sort-of” below), favored the change. The Rev. Russell Saltzman, then pastor of the now-closed Ruskin Heights Lutheran Church, was opposed.

Time passes.

In 2009, the ELCA made the change Simon wanted, and her “extraordinary ordination,” which confined her to what she calls “a weird, liminal space,” became an official ordination, and she was added to the ELCA’s official “roster” of pastors. In recent years, she’s been pastor of the St. Mark Hope and Peace Lutheran Church at 3800 Troost Ave.

More time passes.

Early last month, ELCA’s Central States Synod, made up of congregations in Missouri and Kansas, elected Simon to be its bishop. On Sept. 28, she’ll be installed in that office. Her wife, Colleen Simon, and their son, Dominic, will be there to witness the next step in this remarkable change — change not just in Simon’s career but in the denomination (and in Protestantism itself).

As for Saltzman, he’s now a Catholic and says this about Simon and ordaining gay people to ministry:

“I know Donna well enough to say I believe she will be a good bishop. We’ve had her for dinner and my daughter has served on her parish council and, in part due to Donna’s influence, said daughter is now enrolled at Luther Seminary studying to become an ELCA deacon. … As for the sexuality wars still festering, honestly, I really no longer bother with it. I no longer regard homosexuality, as in Catholic terms, an ‘objective disorder.’ There are far more crucial things to concern Christians these days.”

Saltzman is right, and thus has drawn a different conclusion than has the Southern Baptist Convention, which recently voted to call for overturning Obergefell v. Hodges, the 2015 Supreme Court decision that legalized same-sex marriage across the U.S.

The ELCA was not the first (or most recent) Christian denomination to change its rules on ordaining LGBTQIA+ people. My own denomination, the Presbyterian Church (USA), made that change in 2011, two years after the ELCA. And of the 18 ELCA pastors who, like Simon, had one of those “extraordinary” ordinations, four, including Simon, have become bishops.

Simon, however, never wanted to be a bishop in the past.

“I always joyed in the fact I had no ambition beyond being the pastor of St. Mark Hope and Peace Lutheran Church,” she says, “which I absolutely adored, and it’s already heartbreaking to think about leaving there.”

But for nine years, besides pastoring her congregation, Simon has also worked in the synod office as director for evangelical mission.

Of nine synod employees, she says, two are retiring, “so there’s no one left with institutional knowledge of the whole synod. And, honestly, I really felt a stirring — the first time I’ve felt called to even consider (being a bishop).”

Her ordination and now her election as a bishop stand in sharp contrast to people who read (well, really, misread) the Bible and conclude that it declares homosexuality sinful. By contrast, Mainline Protestantism, based on careful biblical scholarship, now broadly affirms the humanity and equality of people of various gender identities.

When I interviewed Simon recently, she insisted that “it won’t be all rainbows and drag queens in the synod office.”

But the next day, she sent me this revealing note: “I don’t think that sentence really captures my thinking. If I could have a do-over, I’d say this: Inclusion is really important to me. I know what it’s like to feel like you’re standing at the stained-glass window looking in. So a focus of my leadership will be including those whom the church has often omitted.

“In the ELCA, that includes people of color, LGBTQIA+ people, disabled persons, and folks who have struggled with addiction and mental health challenges. I’m also aware that the church is in a really tough time of transition, and the primary task of my office will be to support congregations in meeting the challenges of this time. We have a lot of work to do, and I will be focused on every congregation in our synod that wants our help.”

Simon’s “do-over” is evidence that she’s careful and mature enough to be a bishop for everyone in her synod and won’t get caught up in endless culture-war debates.

Immediate Plans

Simon already knows much of her agenda as bishop: “The thing I will initiate immediately is strengthening our training of lay ministers.” Such nonclergy leaders are especially needed in small churches in rural Kansas and Missouri, where it’s difficult to attract full-time, seminary-educated pastors.

As she prepares to move into this new role, Simon is glad that, as she says, “the church is looking for different things now. You can feel the difference in our synod assemblies over the 25 years I’ve been here. But even the last four or five years, the sense at assembly is that people are really excited about moving forward and not real excited about grinding the old axes and continuing to argue about things that we’ve been arguing about for years.

“We’ve all come to grips with the fact that the church is in a crisis and we don’t have time to adjudicate whether gay people should be ordained or whether we should talk about racial justice in the church.”

Joining Together

One aspect of that crisis is the 50-plus-year history of declining membership in Mainline churches, a decline now also being felt in more theologically conservative denominations such as the Southern Baptist Convention, which has lost members for 18 straight years.

Recognizing such realities, Simon also wants to collaborate with other area Christian denominations.

Having survived several difficult times in her life, including a deadly Amtrak train derailment, Simon is ready to help area ELCA churches “talk about God’s encompassing love.”

But she adds this: “You can’t look around the world right now and say we’re over-emphasizing sin. There is a great deal of evil. Some of it is wearing the clothing of Christianity, and I think we absolutely need to name that for people.”

Area ELCA churches can count on Simon doing just that while also preparing them for more hopeful changes.

Correction: This story has been updated to reflect the correct date of Simon’s installation.

Bill Tammeus, an award-winning columnist formerly with The Kansas City Star, writes the “Faith Matters” blog for The Star’s website, book reviews for The National Catholic Reporter and The Presbyterian Outlook. His latest book is Love, Loss and Endurance: A 9/11 Story of Resilience and Hope in an Age of Anxiety. Email him at wtammeus@gmail.com.