John Frykman: ‘Minister to hippies’ was far more
In the 1960s, The Rev. John Harvey Frykman was known as “the minister to the hippies” in San Francisco. But that turned out to be just part of who he was.
Seemingly limitless in his energy as the decades wore on, he had become a pioneering activist in the city by the time he died at 85, not just for his religious work as a Lutheran minister, but for his efforts in drug treatment, land preservation and gay and lesbian religious rights.
Frykman died following a lengthy illness on Oct. 21 in a hospital in Los Angeles, where he was visiting from his home in San Francisco.
In 1990, Frykman made international headlines when, as pastor of San Francisco’s First United Lutheran Church, he joined with the pastor of St. Francis Lutheran Church to hire three gay and lesbian associate pastors in defiance of their denomination’s national policy. The congregations were suspended by the Evangelical Lutheran Church of America, but the two pastors continued to employ the associates until their congregations were expelled in 1996 for the defiance.
At a 1990 church trial for violating the anti-homosexual policy, Frykman said, “Gays and lesbians are the largest oppressed minority in this country.” He contended, “Ecclesiastical disobedience in the face of unjust practice in the church was in the best tradition of Martin Luther.” The church’s national policy was changed years later.
At Frykman’s funeral on Dec. 2 at Christ Church Lutheran in San Francisco, the Rev. Steven Sabin, the congregation’s pastor, read a passage from the Bible about Lazarus stinking when Jesus went to raise him from the dead, and compared Jesus’ compassionate approach to the way Frykman viewed anyone needing uplift.
“For John Frykman, nobody stank,” Sabin told the gathering.
Kristin Frykman said Sabin’s words captured her father’s spirit perfectly.
“It’s why he did what he did,” she said. “My father couldn’t stand to see people disgraced and treated as if they stank. I’m so proud of him. He never wavered, not one second.”
David Smith, founder of the Haight Ashbury Free Clinic, hired Frykman in 1968 to be founding director of the drug treatment program for his newly formed clinic. He said the pastor’s reputation for connecting with all types of people helped make him a cinch for the gig.
“Calling him minister to the hippies was a reasonable characterization, but he was more than that,” Smith said. “He was a good guy. A good man, and a real pioneer.”
Frykman was born in Boston to Albion and Ruth Frykman, who had immigrated from Sweden. He originally wanted to be a carpenter like his home-building father, and later a high school football coach. But while serving overseas as an Army corporal in the Korean War in 1951 and ‘52 he decided ministry was his calling.
“Dad heard the chaplain talking to wounded guys so they would have the strength to go back to the front, and he thought, ‘That’s what I’ll do,’ ” Kristin Frykman said. “He thought, ‘There is something bigger than me.’ ”
Frykman earned a bachelor’s degree in sociology from Bethany College in 1957 and a master of divinity degree from the Lutheran Theological Seminary at Philadelphia in 1960, and served as a pastor in Sacramento and Oakland before taking the Haight Ashbury Free Clinic job.
He married Cheryl Arnold in 1968 in what was described in the local press as a hippie wedding, with him wearing a burgundy velvet cape. After establishing the treatment center at the free clinic, Frykman moved with his wife to Carmel and England for much of the 1970s, where he did drug counseling and wrote books and she taught elementary school.
In 1978, they moved back to San Francisco for his job as pastor of the First United Lutheran Church.
Frykman added a doctorate in clinical psychology from Ryokan College to his resume in 1982, and a license as a marriage and family counselor. In that same decade, he and his wife founded the Coalition to Save Ocean Beach, which won the preservation of 3.3 acres near the Cliff House that had been slated for private development. The land is now owned by the city and called Sutro Dunes park.
After the expulsion of First United Lutheran, Frykman traveled extensively to minister, counsel and teach in Norway, Sweden, England and more than a dozen other countries as well as throughout the United States.
In 2005, he was given a “Voices of Distinction” award by the Lutheran Lesbian and Gay Ministries organization in San Francisco for his social justice efforts. His wife died in 2012, and he lived in their home near Ocean Beach almost until his death.
Frykman is survived by his daughter, who lives in Alexandria, Va.; two sons, Lars Frykman of Sonoma and Erik Frykman of San Mateo; two grandchildren; and his partner, Barbara Larsen Clevenger of Emeryville.