Seminary chair resigns over president’s old LGBT stance
Chair knew but kept mum on it
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
The chairwoman of United Lutheran Seminary’s trustees has resigned amid criticisms that she didn’t tell fellow trustees or the seminary community that the school’s president had previously directed an organization that urged gay people to change or resist their sexual orientation.
The immediate resignation of the Rev. Elise Brown was announced in a statement Wednesday on the website of the eastern Pennsylvania seminary.
The statement did not indicate any change in the status of the president, the Rev. Theresa Latini. But the board said it would be “assessing and making decisions regarding seminary and board leadership” before it meets Wednesday.
The seminary was formed last year by the merger of historic Lutheran seminaries in Gettysburg and Philadelphia, and it retains campuses in both places.
Rev. Latini, who became president in July, has extensive pastoral and academic experience. But she didn’t tell the search committee that beginning in 1996, she was director for more than five years of the Presbyterian-affiliated group OnebyOne.
Its website features testimonies on “overcoming same-sex attraction,” and Rev. Latini acknowledged she had presented the work of a practitioner of “reparative therapy,” a discredited technique purported to change a person’s sexual orientation.
Rev. Latini said she now repudiates the philosophy and endorses United Lutheran Seminary’s stated commitment to “welcoming students, faculty and staff of all gender identities and sexual orientations.”
Before she took office, Rev. Latini did tell Rev. Brown of her OnebyOne work. Rev. Brown investigated further, checked with people who knew of Rev. Latini’s more recent work record and was satisfied that Rev. Latini was committed to LGBTQ inclusion.
But many alumni and students expressed dismay that neither disclosed this work history until word leaked out late last year.
“The Board of Trustees deeply and sincerely apologizes for the lack of leadership it has displayed during these tumultuous times,” its statement said, committing to “real and lasting changes.”
That will include further training in diversity and communication and in making sure the seminary has adequate behavioral-health services.
The board also said it “denounces and repudiates all manner of conversion or reparative therapy.”