Rev. Dr. R. Guy Erwin is the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA)'s first gay, partnered bishop and the first openly gay man to serve in that office in any of the churches of the global Lutheran World Federation. As an enrolled member of the Osage Nation, he is the first Native bishop in the ELCA as well.
Guy was born in Pawhuska, Oklahoma which was part of the Osage Nation’s reservation in northeastern part of the state. His Osage ancestors had lived in southeastern Kansas but were pushed off their land by, mostly illegal, white settlers in the late 19th century. He is mixed race; most of his ancestors were white and none of his Osage family members married other Osages. Guy’s Osage heritage is still a central part of him and is an enrolled member of the Osage tribe and votes in all tribal elections. He partially grew up on the reservation and learned the traditions of the tribe when he was a child, which makes him a little different from other Osages who did not have that experience. However, it is a source of regret that he was brought up in an era that emphasized assimilation and not their “Native-ness,” so it was impossible to learn the Osage language unless you were born into a fluent family. Fortunately, now every student, Osage or not, in the county learns the language in Head Start; therefore, there are children in his family that can speak it while he cannot. Guy hopes his retirement will bring time to begin studying the Osage language. His Osage name is, Tzi-zho hun-kah.
In many ways, Guy’s childhood in Oklahoma felt like growing up on the frontier. Thinking back, he realizes how homophobic that environment was, but how little he understood of it because he was too young to have conscious issues of sexuality. However, his understandings of how men should act, and other established gender roles, were based in that environment. He tells his friends that he grew up in a “Brokeback Mountain” world, not that he knew any gay people, but if you did not conform to the expectations of masculinity, you could be in deadly danger.
Guy’s parents realized that living in that part of Oklahoma was not ideal for people with a wider worldview, so they moved the family away early on. Most notably, Guy’s family moved to Germany when he was eight years old and stayed until he was twelve. His parents worked as civilian employees of the U.S. Army when the U.S. military presence was very strong in Germany. He had the benefit of going to English language schools, shopping at stores on the base, and living a somewhat ex-pat American life there. His family could not live on the base, so they rented an apartment in the city and their neighbors were German and he learned to speak German well. This cultural experience had a powerful influence on him because Germany has been an element of his life ever since. In a way, it explains how he became Lutheran, too.
Guy was not introduced to Lutheranism at home. He grew up in a non-religious family without any Lutherans in his community either. His parents were not anti-religion, but they were just not interested. They were cultural Protestants and veered away from people who were very religious because a degree of judgmentalism usually came with them. His parents still supported his career though, they sat in the front row when he was installed as bishop. However, they must have wondered what they did to raise a son who became a religious leader because it was not in their usual family formula. Looking back on his life’s trajectory, Guy feels blessed with this upbringing because he learned well how to navigate in an outsider-insider status. He is an Oklahoman and Native, but does not reside in his birthplace. He is a convert to Christianity and to Lutheranism, but also an expert on it. These seemingly opposed elements of his life have brought Guy distinctive and unique perspectives on the world.
During his undergraduate years at Harvard University, Guy felt the stirrings of an interest in faith which brought him to the Lutherans, who he was already familiar with from historical study and living in Germany. He found it to be a congenial faith, and ongoing his study of the Reformation and being a young seeker visiting different churches. The Lutheran church in Cambridge lured him in because it seemed the most representative of what it originally believed during the Reformation. He could hear the theology of Luther in the sermons and he appreciated the clarity of the Lutherans; they knew what they believed.
In a somewhat paradoxical fashion during his college years, Guy’s interest in Christianity grew in parallel to an awareness of being gay. Unlike some, he has not found a way in religion to avoid or to hide from being gay, but he kept background. Due to his sense that if the Lutherans believed what they said they believed, based on the Reformation story and how Luther understood humanity, that was a place where he should be safe as a gay person. Gay positivity was not present then but also neither was homophobia that he could hear. His church did not care about judging other people, the only moral concerns he heard concerned those not oriented towards loving their neighbor. Thus, becoming a Christian, being baptized as a college student, and joining the Lutheran church were more monumental steps in his life than he initially realized. These choices were personal at the time, but were inadvertently major career choices as well. He had always imagined, as an avid student of history, that he would go to law school and become a lawyer, law professor, or judge. But he was truly interested in the Reformation, European History, and Germany’s hooks were still sunk into him.
Guy graduated from Harvard with his Bachelor’s degree in 1980 and began applying for graduate school. He applied to law programs and History Ph.D. programs and was accepted into several, but he chose a full-ride to Yale University for his Ph.D. At the same time, Guy desired to deepen his connection to the Lutheran church. He had already been thinking about what it would be like to become a clergyperson and started the process during his first year at Yale in 1980-1981. The ELCA had not been founded yet, so his denomination was the LCA. He did not carry through the candidacy process to become a minister though, in part because he was not strongly encouraged. They wanted him to be ordained and serve in a parish for several years before pursuing a specialized ministry. Since he was already in a Ph.D. program and headed towards a teaching position, he thought that he could not interrupt that path to work in a parish for a few years and then return to academic life.
Continuing with his academic path, Guy spent more time in Germany for his dissertation research and became more aware of being gay. Going to gay bars abroad without worrying someone he knew would see him boosted his comfort. He was out to friends in the U.S. when he returned and became at peace with the fact that he was not going to be anything other than a gay man. However, the church had not caught up to that point just yet. In the late 1980’s when he was finishing his dissertation centered on the late medieval roots of Luther’s theology of the cross and beginning to teach, the ELCA was faced directly with a crisis of what to do with gay clergy. A controversy about of four seminary graduates in Berkeley, California who were denied ordination by the synod for being gay initiated the crisis. Some people were outraged that they were even considered, and others were outraged that they were denied. Reactively, the church answered this challenge, by imposing new specific rules that made it harder for LGBTQ people to get ordained, such as directly asking people about their sexuality and requiring a commitment to celibacy. Feeling like these stipulations were too great a sacrifice, Guy did not consider ordination again until later in life. Instead, he became a professor who taught Lutheranism, worked at Lutheran institutions, and even worked in a Lutheran congregation as an un-ordained associate pastor.
In 2000, after teaching at Yale for six years, Guy was called from New England to California to take a professorship in Lutheran Theology and History at California Lutheran University in Thousand Oaks and taught there for the next thirteen years. While teaching,he reentered the candidacy process in 2008, supported by his bishop, while belonging to largely LGBTQ congregation in the most gay-friendly Lutheran church in LA. In 2009, the ordination rules for LGBTQ people changed by a groundbreaking church-wide vote. The Lutheran church is governed by an assembly that meets every three years and those who wanted policy changes have been working behind the scenes by putting in resolutions and getting the church to vote on changing the rules for LGBTQ ordination for years. It was defeated every time until 2009. Guy was involved with the movement that worked to bring change, but he did not pursue an overt leadership position because he was busy with other commitments and mostly did not want his actions to be understood as selfishly agitating to get himself ordained. He is very grateful for the laypeople, who had no intentions to become clergy, who carried out this ordination battle on behalf of others and alongside them. So, after completing his candidacy process, Guy became the first openly gay person ordained under the new rules west of the Mississippi in May 2011.
Shortly after in 2013, Guy was elected to replace the same bishop who had supported him strongly for ordination. Despite serving the church for around 30 years, he was to be selected, astonished, because he was only recently ordained. He was well-known in the synod, so it was not a total surprise to him, but he did not think they would elect a gay person. He believed it was important for people like him to be considered though, so he allowed his name to be submitted. In a historic decision, he was elected the first gay bishop in the ELCA in May 2013.
Additionally, he was the first Native bishop in the ELCA and carried that identity with him as well. In 2019, at their national church-wide assembly, they had a large Native-themed worship service with a couple thousand people and with Native music. Guy’s vestments featured Osage ribbon work patterns made by his sister as he presided over the Eucharist, and their preacher gave a sermon in both Lakota and English. This moving event was a highlight of his time as bishop because he was able to live all his identities at once.
Though his election was a celebrated milestone in the ELCA, there were still some people who were uncomfortable. Since Guy identifies as a traditionalist, insofar that he cares about the church’s past and what legacy it brings, he had relative ease talking to conservative members who want to keep the past alive because they can connect on the need for tradition while he can advocate the need for change too. With this ability, he made it a point to befriend a number of the bishops that had opposed the changes that allowed him to be ordained and elected bishop. He helped them understand he was not an alien body in the church and did not intend to change what they loved so much, but was in fact a defender of it. Therefore, when the second gay bishop was elected a few years later, no one thought it was a strange thing! Their presence changed how the bishops talked about LGBTQ people because now they were in the room. The second gay bishop’s election brought Guy relief because it was hard to be alone with the pressure to be exemplary, but he also wept during the livestreamed event because realized he would not be the last gay bishop in the ELCA.
After serving a six-year term and being elected for another, Guy accepted a new challenge, he was appointed president of United Lutheran Seminary and Ministerium of Pennsylvania Chair and Professor of Reformation Studies in August 2020, thus becoming the first gay and first Native seminary president in the ELCA. He credits his friend and colleague, the second gay bishop, for making it possible because he was able to consider the position knowing he would not leave the conference of bishops in good hands. Guy is an academic at heart and felt that as bishop he was not using all his gifts to the fullest.
Although he loved being bishop and would have stayed for his second term, coming to the seminary brought him back into academics and gave him a chance for a final act. The seminary needed him as well because the institution was in trouble and required someone to provide stability and craft a future for it. He was recently renewed for another five years as president, though. He has accomplished what was first asked of him, but the job is not over yet. Like Moses, he might not get to the promised land but he can take them to the hilltop, show them where the valley is, and where to go next. After a long and storied career, retirement is beginning to appeal to him.
Guy’s husband, Robert T. Flynn, has been a wonderful supporter of Guy’s career. Rob hails from Clarksburg, West Virginia and his father still resides there. Growing up, he tended to hide in his small-town church by being very active, thus drawing attention away from his own sense of difference. When his church, which was a bit homophobic, became too much to bear, he used his musical talent as a pianist to get a job in a better church. Especially coming from small towns that were not as cosmopolitan and open-minded, Guy and Rob feel that their generations found their own ways to be who they were and reduce the risk they faced for being different.
Guy and Rob met while attending Yale Divinity School. Guy was pursuing his Ph.D. and beginning to teach while Rob was finishing up his Master’s degree. They were introduced by a common friend and Guy did not think anything would come of their meeting because it was the end of the school year and Rob was about to graduate and move across the country. Regardless, he invited Rob to his end-of-year party and Rob reciprocated by inviting him to his graduation party. At that party, he met Rob’s parents from West Virginia and ended up connecting with them. Rob noticed that Guy and his parents got along well and they arranged to go on a date soon after. At the end of the summer, Rob decided to give up his Seattle apartment deposit and stay in New Haven to work for Yale University Press. After another year, they started living together and their life trajectories have aligned ever since.
Guy and Rob did not get married until it was legal in California, which was later in their lives. Guy recounts his initial “proposal” was not planned and happened rather comically. Since his election as bishop was newsworthy in the community, he was interviewed by their local NPR station in LA. He was prepared for all but one question: at the end, the interviewer asked if him and Rob were going to get married now that they could. Hesitating, because he had not really given that idea much thought, he stammered out “yes I suppose so” which garnered a laugh from the interviewer who replied “I guess you just proposed on national radio.” He came out of the green room and Rob gave him a strange look, but ultimately was content with it. They have enjoyed nearly 30 years together and although they did not adopt children, because it would have essentially impossible back when they were younger due to careers and no marriage equality, they are happily uncles to their siblings’ friends’ children.
While being religious can be a problem for many gay people, for Guy it was a help in many ways. He knew he had a community in the Lutheran church that accepted him and as he came to understand himself differently over time, the community moved along with him. He was able to find spaces that were safe and he was lucky to be in the ELCA because they ultimately moved in the right direction. He stuck with the ELCA knowing that if the church was true to itself, then it would do what it needed to do and he feels lucky to see it come to fruition in his lifetime.
(This biographical statement was written by Elizabeth Herrick from an interview with Guy Erwin on April 22, 2025, supplemented with the digital resources below, and was edited by Guy Erwin.)
Biography Date: September 2025
“Rev. Dr. Guy Erwin | Profile”, LGBTQ Religious Archives Network, accessed September 17, 2025, https://lgbtqreligiousarchives.org/profiles/guy-erwin.