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| Ex-bishop Justman |
Posted by Father Anonymous:
ELCA Bishop Resigns; Reason a Mystery
Bishop James Justman, of the ELCA's East-Central Wisconsin Synod, has resigned. (ELCA release here, Wausau Daily Herald here) He was elected to a second term in 2012 and, following the meeting of the Conference of Bishops in October, has been on "sabbatical." Bishop Justman cites "personal reasons" for his resignation, the sort of thing that inevitably raises the questions it refuses to answer.
In politics and big business, "personal reasons" or "to spend more time with family" are the customary whitewash for a scandal or a major screwup. But is it the same in church circles? We genuinely do not know.
Now, it is easy to imagine reasons that a bishop might choose to step down. The job, especially as it has been practiced by the ELCA, is almost comically bad. You are given great symbolic status and virtually no executive authority; you are called to manage dwindling resources in an atmosphere of panic and distrust of institutions; you are an authority among people who largely distrust authority. Although your job title calls you to teach doctrine and administer discipline in the tradition of the apostles, your church feels more comfortable if you serve as a middle manager, giving mildly inspirational pep talks and telling a few jokes, but otherwise deferring to the halfwits they elect to lesser offices.
It is easy to imagine why one might want to quit a job like this. But by the time most pastors are elected bishop, they have a pretty good idea what the job entails, and have declared themselves ready to take it on. If they weren't ready to serve, they would have avoided election in the first place. Although some, like Lower Susquehanna's Penrose Hoover, are said to accept only reluctantly, they accept nonetheless.
So why do ELCA bishops typically give up their posts? Some, like Robert Rimbo, get a once-in-a lifetime offer to leave the blasted postapocalyptic wasteland of Detroit for Manhattan's Upper West Side. (Likewise, Paul Stumme-Diers left Milwaukee for a parish on Puget Sound, and Craig Johnson left the Minneapolis bishop's office to serve a large congregation in the same city.) Nothing especially scandalous there. Some, like Paul Egertson of California, are asked to resign for principled actions which nonetheless violate church policy -- like Egertson's 1994 ordination of a partnered lesbian. Depending upon your perspective, that's downright heroic.
But others, like Rimbo's successor Stephen Marsh, find that the stresses of their ministry make it impossible to keep their "addiction issues" -- Marsh's word -- in check. In 2006, Michael Neils resigned as bishop of the Grand Canyon Synod and as an ELCA pastor after admitting to an adulterous liaison; other ELCA bishops -- Slovak Zion's Kenneth Zindle and South-Central Wisconsin's Lowell Mays among them -- have resigned after accusations of sexual misconduct. And of course Mays' successor and Justman's Wisconsin neighbor Bruce Burnside, killed somebody while (allegedly) driving drunk.
The thing is that if you resign to accept a new call, you tell people about it. Even if you resign for some pretty awful reason, like a relapse or an affair, the custom seems to be to make it public. So what sort of reasons for a resignation are so dire that an ELCA bishop chooses not to disclose them?
Maybe we're way off base here. Maybe these personal reasons have no moral or ethical element to them at all. It could be that he has been diagnosed with some grave illness, or that a member of his family needs urgent attention, or some other genuinely private and personal thing. Terrible as those may be to contemplate, forgive us for hoping that's it.
Meanwhile, we pray for Justman, his family and especially for his synod, and hope that when the story comes out it will do nothing to vindicate our worst fears.
2 comments:
- Stan Theman said...
- Wow-so you're not even a little scandalized that your bishops are as uneager as the Tea Party to "Celebrate Diversity" and want to get out of Detroit for less ethnically vibrant places?
It used to be you had to come up with an excuse for leaving a place with poor people/majority "people of color" for places with lots of rich people/ethnically as white as cream cheese; now you're not even bothering to hide the fact that your bishops are as averse from trouble as the rest of the population.
Guess that might be one of the many reasons you're moral authority isn't quite what it used to be? - Father Anonymous said...
- Hah. I know you're a troll and I should simply not hit publish -- a policy I will adopt starting now -- but that attempt was so colossally stupid that it deserves a response.
Have you ever been to New York City, you twerp? Because whatever else anybody may say about it, it's not as white as cream cheese.
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| ELCA Presiding Bishop Elizabeth Eaton enjoyed her coronation. |
Evangelical Lutheran Church in America
God’s work. Our hands.
December 20, 2013
Dear brothers and sisters of the East-Central Synod of Wisconsin,
We greet you in the name of our Lord Christ Jesus. We are sad to share the news that the Rev.
James A. Justman has resigned as bishop of the East-Central Synod of Wisconsin.
Bishop Jim Justman began a sabbatical following the October 2013 meeting of the ELCA
Conference of Bishops. During that sabbatical time, he did some significant personal reflection
and came to the decision to resign. He submitted his resignation from the office of Bishop
effective Thursday, December 19, 2013. His letter is attached.
We are grateful to Bishop Justman for his faithful service to the synod. Our prayers are with him
and his family as he continues in his discernment. We pray, too, for you in the East-Central
Synod of Wisconsin during this time of transition.
As Bishop Justman leaves office, be assured that synod leadership has made preparations for
continuity of leadership in the office of Bishop. An interim bishop will be announced soon.
Churchwide leaders will continue to pray for and to support the synod during the interim process.
In this Advent season, we continue to put our hope and trust in the one God who is always with
us giving us strength and wisdom.
Advent blessings,
The Rev. Elizabeth A. Eaton Pam Pfaff
Presiding Bishop Vice President, East-Central Synod of Wisconsin
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