ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Saturday, May 4, 1996 TAG: 9605060059
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C4 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: CODY LOWE STAFF WRITER
THE PRESIDING BISHOP of the largest Lutheran church in the country said people are hungry for religious nourishment but often feed on spiritual Twinkies.
H. George Anderson misses Southern barbecue.
As presiding bishop of the 5.3 million member Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, Anderson has to live near the denomination's headquarters in Chicago. He grew up in California and went to Yale and the University of Pennsylvania. Before assuming his position, he spent 12 years as president of Luther College in Decorah, Iowa.
But for 23 years in the middle of that career, first as a professor of church history and later as president of Lutheran Theological Southern Seminary, he lived in Columbia, S.C. And he developed a taste for Southern food.
You might not guess it from his trim build, but he loves barbecue. And biscuits with gravy. And he likes to top off a meal with a glass of iced tea. So he's always glad, he says, to get back to the region - primarily to meet with old friends and acquaintances developed during his years at the seminary, but also to get a taste of the food.
Last November, Anderson, 64, took the helm of the nation's largest Lutheran group and third-largest Protestant denomination. He is still in the process of getting around to meet with people around the country, which was the reason for his visit to the Virginia Synod - a meeting with clergy in Waynesboro Friday afternoon.
Anderson's first ties to Southwest Virginia predate even his seminary experience, when, as a college student, he did volunteer work at Lutheran Mountain Mission in Konnarock near Mount Rogers.
"It was a very important summer. I saw how ministry could be helpful - socially active - and missionary," Anderson said Friday. It eventually was one of the factors that led him to decide on a career in the ministry.
After earning a bachelor's degree from Yale in 1953, he went to Lutheran Theological Seminary at Philadelphia, and then to graduate school at the University of Pennsylvania, where he earned his doctorate in history in 1962.
By that time, he was already teaching church history at the Columbia seminary, where he was named president in 1970. He left that job in 1981 and moved to the presidency of Luther College.
He was elected to the position now being called "presiding bishop" of the denomination last year.
Anderson says his professional training and experience as a historian give him a helpful perspective for his job.
For instance, where some people see signs of trouble over finances or membership, Anderson sees opportunities.
"Our denomination is going to survive. Denominations are tough critters. Anybody who has tried to merge two congregations ... knows how deeply ingrained" religious habits and feelings can be, Anderson said.
The nation is in a "period of revival of interest in religion," the bishop said. "It's a spiritual jungle out there," with many people seeking spiritual fulfillment.
From the church's perspective, many of those seekers "are eating junk food, or fast food, not the solid meat of a mature religious tradition," Anderson said. "Our job is to help people see that the food we offer will be more nourishing in the long range than the sweets, the Twinkies, they are popping now."
That doesn't mean that the church does not need to be innovative in its approaches to welcoming new members and retaining current ones, Anderson said. A newly released denominational study found that almost a third of the denomination's 11,000 congregations offer some type of alternative worship service from the traditional Lutheran service.
Although there remain conflicts within the denomination over issues such as the ordination of gays and lesbians, Anderson said he has found in his brief time as presiding bishop "a real eagerness of people to be the church and get on with our mission and ministry."
Since the denomination was founded in 1988 through a merger of three Lutheran bodies, there has been a fair amount of "conflict over how to do things," Anderson said. But now, "we have lived together long enough to trust each other ... and we've begun to produce clergy and other leaders who have never known any other body. This is their church.
"I'm very optimistic about the possibilities before us. This is a very good time to be the church."
LENGTH: Medium: 84 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: headshot of Andersonby CNB