The gloomy Monongahela River Valley outside Pittsburgh remains the tattered theater for a long-running dispute between Lutheran church officials and activist clergy, with no closing date in sight to the dramatic campaign of religious and civil disobedience.
The two-year battle has resulted in the defrocking of one Lutheran pastor and the recent recommendation for a similar disciplinary action against a second Lutheran minister.
At issue in the extraordinary conflict is the widespread and chronic unemployment, hovering near 20 percent, in some parts of the once-prosperous Steel Belt near Pittsburgh, and the flagrantly controversial tactics adopted by guerrilla-style preachers in their crusade to draw attention to issues of
”economic justice” and ”corporate evil.”
The protest methods have included placing dead fish in safe-deposit boxes at Pittsburgh`s Mellon Bank, disrupting worship services in congregations where some of the city`s business leaders are members and releasing skunk oil in the air-conditioning system of a building in which a Lutheran synod meeting was convened.
”We`re weary of it all,” said Rev. Edward Kappeler, an aide to Bishop Kenneth R. May of the Lutheran Church in America`s Western Pennsylvania-West Virginia Synod. ”It takes up too much time and money and energy, and takes us away from the real ministry we should be doing.”
Despite that exasperation, the battling clergy and militant union officials are vowing to press the fight, charging that high-ranking church officials have abandoned the 100,000 unemployed people in western
Pennsylvania.
”The values of our culture have corrupted our most trusted institution, the church,” charged an editorial in the current newsletter of the Denominational Ministry Strategy, the Pittsburgh-based group spearheading the crusade to persuade financial institutions and business interests to revive the area`s flagging steel and other heavy industries.
Earlier this week, two of the central figures in the dispute took their message to Minneapolis, where a national Lutheran panel was convened. The two protesters, defrocked pastor D. Douglas Roth of the now-disbanded Trinity Lutheran Church in Clairton, Pa., and Rev. Daniel Solberg, the deposed pastor of Nativity Lutheran Church in Allison Park, Pa., arrived with the freshly released $250,000 documentary film, ”The Fighting Ministers,” that chronicles the Pittsburgh saga.
The film, which also was screened Thursday for Lutheran Church in America officials in New York, was financed and narrated by former ”Starsky & Hutch” television actor David Soul, the older brother of Rev. Solberg.
After the 1984 jailing and subsequent defrocking of Roth, the 35-year-old Rev. Solberg has become the chief focus of the controversy. He has vowed to appeal a ruling earlier this month by a Lutheran disciplinary panel recommending that he be removed from the church`s ordained clergy roster for refusing a transfer to another parish. His case is a virtual replay of the events that led to Roth`s dismissal from the ministry.
In response to the controversy, Bishop May last year appointed a commission on economic justice in his synod, but its full report has yet to be released. The initial phase of its study, made public late last year, elevated tensions by condemning the theology and tactics of the DMS protesters. But a church source said the commission is likely to level criticism at the synod officials as well.
The dispute, although no longer the stuff of front-page headlines in the Pittsburgh newspapers, is likely to leave a permanent mark on the church as American Lutherans struggle to merge three denominational factions into one body by 1988.
