Lutherans Concerned

ReconcilingWorks, initially named Lutherans Concerned for Gay People and subsequently Lutherans Concerned/North America, is an organization of laypeople, pastors, and primarily from the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA) and the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Canada (ELCIC), that is working for the full acceptance and inclusion of people of all sexual orientations and gender identities and expressions in the life of the Church. It is one of many LGBT-welcoming church movements to emerge in American Christianity in the late 20th century.

ReconcilingWorks's mission statement reads: "Working at the intersection of oppressions, ReconcilingWorks embodies, inspires, advocates and organizes for the acceptance and full participation of people of all sexual orientations and gender identities within the Lutheran communion and its ecumenical and global partners."

ReconcilingWorks headquarters is located in Minneapolis/St. Paul.

On June 16 and 17, 1974, five people gathered at the invitation of Pastor Jim Siefkes at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis. Rev. Siefkes, a straight ally, then Director for Discovering Ministries in the American Lutheran Church (ALC), had been given a grant by the ALC to hold a national meeting of homosexual persons and resource persons for the purpose of discussing their sexual orientation and its effect on their relationship with society and the church. The ALC’s purpose was to open a dialogue so that the church would become “less a source of oppression,” according to Siefkes.

At that meeting were Allen Blaich (student, University of Utah in Salt Lake City), Howard Erickson (reporter, Minneapolis Star Tribune and contributor to The Advocate), Diane Fraser (assistant professor at Gustavus Adolphus University), Marie Kent (instructor in a Minneapolis home for the mentally challenged) and the Rev. Jim Lokken (American Bible Society, New York). Erickson, Kent, and Lokken have since died.

By the end of the meeting, the group had founded Lutherans Concerned for Gay People (LCGP), run by a Steering Committee under bylaws typed out ad hoc in twenty minutes by Erickson on a typewriter he found in the next room. The organization’s name was Blaich’s idea. The first two Coordinators were Blaich and Fraser. Marie Kent became the Treasurer. Dues were three dollars. There would be a newsletter, The Gay Lutheran, that Erickson would edit, of which the current quarterly, Concord, is the latter-day descendent.

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