Censure And Admonition Of St. Paul-Reformation For Calling Pastor Anita Hill In 2001 Lifted

St. Paul-Reformation Lutheran Church in St. Paul, Minnesota, has been informed the 9-year-old censure and admonition placed on the congregation have been lifted. The congregation was informed during worship on Sunday, April 25, that these adverse actions had been lifted on April 21.

The censure and admonition, as well as sanctions, had been imposed on the congregation by the ELCA as a reaction to the April 28, 2001, ordination of Anita Hill as a pastor at a ceremony presided over by Rev. Paul Tidemann, then pastor of St. Paul-Reformation. Present for the ceremony and participating in the laying on of hands were Rev. Paul Egertson, then bishop of the ELCA Southwest California Synod; Rev. Dr. Krister Stendahl, Bishop Emeritus of Stockholm, Sweden and retired Academic Dean of the Harvard Divinity School; Rev. Lowell Ehrdahl, Bishop Emeritus of St. Paul Area Synod; and Rev. Stanley Olson, retired bishop of the Pacific Southwest Synod (Lutheran Church in America). The ordination was an act of the congregation gathered, under a provision in the Lutheran Confessions that allows congregations to ordain when bishops can't or won't. The call and ordination were acts of ecclesiastical disobedience. These actions in 2001 are the subject of a documentary film, This Obedience, available through LC/NA. The ELCA's disciplinary actions were imposed for calling a pastor not on the ELCA roster of clergy.

The sanctions were later lifted, but the censure remained in place until April 21.

Again, we have the signs of changed policies coming out of the decisions of the church at the 2009 Churchwide Assembly. These signs are uplifting and encouraging, like the signs of Spring following a long, dark and difficult Winter. In this Eastertide, we celebrate the resurrection of Christ and the promise of salvation that pulls us all through the difficulties of life.

The news from St. Paul-Reformation is also cause for celebration, and we rejoice with that congregation and Pastor Anita Hill, that, holding steadfast to their decisions, they have come through vindicated and restored.

We look forward to further uplifting and encouraging signs this Springtime.

Phil Soucy
Director Communications LC/NA
communications@lcna.org