ELCA Lutherans elect first openly gay bishop

ELCA Lutherans elect first openly gay bishop

GLENDALE, Calif. — The Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA) has elected its first openly gay bishop, R. Guy Erwin, to oversee churches in Southern California, four years after the church allowed openly gay men and lesbians to serve as clergy.

Following a wider trend within other mainline Protestant denominations to appoint gays and lesbians to leadership positions, the ELCA’s five-county Southwest California Synod elected Erwin on May 31 to a six-year term.

Erwin, who holds a doctorate, bachelor’s and two master’s degrees from Yale University, has spent several years teaching university and seminary classes. He currently serves as a pastor at Faith Lutheran Church, Canoga Park, Calif., and as a professor of Lutheran confessional theology at California Lutheran University.

Part Osage Indian, Erwin also is the first Native American bishop in the ELCA. 

The election is likely to further strain relations between the ELCA and the nation’s second-largest Lutheran body, the more theologically conservative Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod.

Erwin will serve alongside the first openly lesbian Episcopal bishop, Mary Glasspool, who was elected as a suffragan (assistant) bishop in Los Angeles in 2009.