American Notes Lutherans

When Lutheran Minister D. Douglas Roth last November defied his bishop and refused to leave his church in a depressed steel town near Pittsburgh, police were called in, and Roth was jailed for 112 days. Last week a church synod voted 499 to 33 to defrock the still outspoken minister. It was only the second such action in the 22-year history of the Lutheran Church in America. Said Nadine Roth, his wife: "I guess we're like any other unemployed family now."

Roth and other ministers at first enjoyed the support of the church when in 1980 they proposed to enlist Pittsburgh corporations to help laid-off steelworkers. But then they turned to confrontation, disrupting church services attended by bank and steel executives, and ignored church orders to stop. After his defrocking at last week's synod in Greenville, Pa., Roth seized the podium and refused to leave the auditorium, shouting, "There is great corruption in the church!" He was arrested again, along with a fellow dissident minister, then released on the condition that he not go near the auditorium. Said Bishop James Crumley: "We're tired of (the controversy). We've been embarrassed by it, and it has hurt the church internally."