By BILL SHILSTONE
Redwood City Tribune Staff Writer

3/18/72

A San Carlos church is backing its former youth activities director in his attempt to become the first admitted homosexual to be ordained into the ministry of the United Church of Christ and perhaps any church.

William Johnson 25, currently working in a lay capacity in a church outreach pilot program in Los Angeles, announced his homosexuality last year before he graduated from Pacific School of Religion in Berkeley with a bachelor of divinity degree.
Johnson asked the 600-member San Carlos Community Church of Christ to sponsor his request for ordination. He joined the church’s congregation and was hired by the church as a part time youth activities director after he came to the Bay Area following graduation from Elmhurst College in Chicago.

News of Johnson’s ordination request was published in the church bulletins mailed to members of both the San Mateo and Redwood City churches.

The church’s 12-member board of diaconate (deacons) voted to support Johnson, but the seven-member board of church and ministry of the Northern California Conference of the United Church of Christ turned Johnson down by a 4-3 vote without comment.

The San Carlos Church has one more avenue open to it—approval by the Golden Gate Association of the church, composed of 36 churches from Redwood City to Eureka.

Delegates from the association will be selected at a meeting April 8 in Petaluma and will vote on the issue in San Carlos April 30.

“He (Johnson) said he didn’t want a cloud over his career,” said Robert Black, chairman of the Board of Diaconate of the San Carlos church. “He wanted nothing hidden. We didn’t know he was homosexual when we hired him, but when he read his ordination paper he expressed his homosexual orientation.”

He received support of the board because of the way he built up the youth program and because of the confidence in him within the congregation. He had developed a feeling of honesty and purpose in the way he conducted himself with the youth and the congregation.

The vote was not unanimous, but it wasn’t close. The main point in his favor was its sterling character and honesty.

“There are those who are very strongly against homosexualism and don’t want it part of the ministry. The strongest argument against it is that the church would seem to be supporting homosexuality. There was no feeling that Bill would corrupt our youth. Rather, there was the feeling that if we let him become ordained, then other homosexuals will be ordained and they will corrupt.

“It would make his job cough, sure, because of prejudice. Others who don’t acknowledge their homosexuality have more trouble, though, because they are living a lie.”

“An important thing to remember,” Black said, “Is that in our church ministers are never assigned, they are picked by pulpit committees. Bill has insisted that his dossier, which would be sent to prospective churches, contain notations that he is a homosexual.

Johnson will apparently get no support from the Redwood City and San Macen delega. tions when the association meets Match 30.

“The general feeling in our congregation is that people are not interested in bringing
in a homosexual as a leader in the church, at least not ours,” said Ray Kern, moderator of the First Congregational Church of Redwood City.

I had a hard time even getting approval to write about the issue in our weekly newsletter. Our five delegates are not instructed how to vote, but I know they all have the same general feeling.”

Kern, who is one of the delegates, said, “A homosexual can’t be a leader in the church because people with normal life styles can’t respect him.

“His life style is different. He is not perpetuating humanity, for one thing. He is not living a correct life. The idea is obnoxious to me. I could never send a child of mine to a homosexual for leadership and guidance.”

Kern said he has heard of ministers who admitted or were found to be homosexual after they were ordained but never of a prospective minister who made it known beforehand.

The board of deacons of the congregational church of San Mateo have said “no” to Johnson’s request and the minister, David Held, opposes it, according to the church’s newsletter.

Contacted at his Los Angeles home, Johnson was dismayed his ordination request had been made public, but added he would have no comment to make until after the April 30 vote.

“I have tried to follow the denominational procedures and structure as much as humanly possible because this is an ecclesiastical matter, not a public one.”