2020
Professor Stephen Scharper writes about the emotional homecoming of Rev. Ralph Carl Wushke who was exiled from the Lutheran Church in 1988. Tears, and applause, flowed through the standing-room-only gathering at the First Evangelical Lutheran Church near Ryerson University in downtown Toronto. Bishops and church leaders asked for forgiveness, for their treatment, not only of Pastor Wushke, but of the entire LGBTQ community formally ostracized from pastoral ministry in 1989.