Defrocked Gay Pastor Appeals Lutheran Church Decision

ATLANTA (AP) -- The pastor of Atlanta's oldest Lutheran church has appealed the decision by an Evangelical Lutheran Church in America disciplinary committee to defrock him because he's in a same-sex relationship.

The Rev. Bradley Schmeling, who was ordered last month to leave the pulpit of St. John's Lutheran Church on Aug. 15, has appealed that decision in an effort to prompt the church to change its rules on gay clergy, his spokeswoman said in a statement Monday.

The appeals committee, which consists of 12 lay and clergy members, will take at least two months to reach a decision, said ELCA spokesman John Brooks. He said Bishop Ronald Warren of the ECLA's Southeastern Synod also had appealed a portion of the ruling deemed unfavorable to the synod, and that appeal would also be heard by the appeals committee.

Schmeling told St. John's 350-member congregation and his bishop that he is gay before he was chosen as pastor in 2000. But last year, when Schmeling announced he had found a lifelong companion, Warren asked the 44-year-old pastor to resign. When Schmeling refused, Warren started disciplinary proceedings against him that led to a closed-door January trial in which a disciplinary hearing committee basically served as the jury.

In their decision, released last month, seven members of the 12-member committee said they felt the rule as stated left them no choice but to defrock Schmeling. But the committee also wrote that, if not bound by the church's rules, it "would find almost unanimously that Pastor Schmeling is not engaged in conduct that is incompatible with the ministerial office" and would order no discipline.

Further, the committee suggested that the ELCA remove its rule and reinstate gay clergy who were removed or resigned because they were in a same-sex "lifelong partnership."

At the ELCA's last national meeting in 2005, a proposal to allow synods to decide if they would accept a pastor in a same-sex relationship failed after getting nearly half the 1,000 votes, short of the required two-thirds majority.

St. John's members and gay rights groups hope Schmeling's case will provide the final push for change, which the ELCA could consider at its biennial meeting churchwide assembly Aug. 6-12 in Chicago, just days before Schmeling is set to be removed from the clergy.

The ELCA, which has 4.9 million members, allows openly gay clergy, but only if they are celibate. Still, many Lutheran churches support ordaining partnered gays and perform same-sex blessing ceremonies despite the policy. The same debate over how biblical verses on gay relationships should be interpreted is tearing at many mainline Protestant groups.