John M. Linscheid | Profile

Although John Linscheid works as an office manager at the University of Pennsylvania’s Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering Department, his biography is here because he is a writer, speaker, and an activist in the Anabaptist-Mennonite tradition of the Christian faith. He and his lover, Ken M. White (together 20 years as of September 2003), currently are exploring the art of creating nurturing space for queer and progressive individuals on a journey toward liberation of the world, the flesh, and the spirit.

John was influential in moving gay biblical interpretation beyond apologetics to queer-experience centered understandings. He has continually challenged the Mennonite denomination’s move to institutionalize and harden its official hostility toward LGBTQ people. John’s steady participation and leadership as a lay person at Germantown Mennonite Church along with his vigorous advocacy when the congregation was excommunicated was one element among many that prepared the ground for that congregation to become the first in the Mennonite denomination to ordain an openly gay man, David Weaver, in 2001.

John was born in 1953, one of three sons of J. Willard Linscheid (1923-1992) and Ruth Linscheid (b.1931). He grew up in the rural, ethnically low German Mennonite town of Goessel, Kansas. At age 18, he was baptized and became a member of the Goessel Mennonite Church.

In high school and at Bethel College (North Newton, Kansas), John actively participated in the peace movement, opposing the Vietnam War. He majored in Bible and Religion, graduating with a B.A. in 1975. In 1976, he received a North American Ministerial Fellowship to attend seminary. He studied for two years at The School of Theology at Claremont, California, and then transferred to Mennonite Biblical Seminary in Elkhart, Indiana, where he received his M. Div. degree in 1980.

In 1980, he became the first pastor to be hired by the Lawrence [Kansas] Mennonite Fellowship [now Peace Mennonite Church]. The congregation was funded as a church planting effort by the Western District Conference of the General Conference Mennonite Church. His pastoral duties included maintaining strong ties with the Lawrence Coalition for Peace and Justice and he helped to lead the coalition in conducting referendum for a Nuclear Weapons Freeze.

John came out as a gay man to his family and a few friends in the late 1970s but remained publicly closeted. In the early 1980s, John wrote a number of pro-gay articles for the Brethren Mennonite Council for Gay Concerns (BMC). In 1983, he became one of the first Mennonite pastors in the United States to come out publicly. The congregation, divided on how to respond, decided to retain him as pastor on an interim basis. However, the district conference demanded John’s ouster as a condition for continued funding. In May 1984, John left Lawrence. Although John had been approved for ordination (he had been licensed until then), his coming out brought a cancellation of plans for that step.

About 6 months before his ouster, John met Ken White and the two became lovers. In 1985, they moved to Philadelphia. John took a position as an assistant editor at The Other Side magazine, a position he would hold for five years.

While at The Other Side, John authored a seminal article "Reading the Bible with Gay Eyes." In that and subsequent articles, John eschewed pleading excuses to answer antigay elements. Instead, he started with LGBTQ experience and asked what keys it might hold to unlocking scripture. Instead of arguing whether it was "okay to be gay," John’s articles uncovered queer dynamics in texts such as creation stories, the destruction of Sodom, and the Gospel of John.

Throughout the 1980s and 1990s, John spoke frequently to churches, classes, and conferences about gay spiritual, political, and social experience.

In 1994, John and Ken were asked to lead a session for men at the annual Gay, Lesbian, and Christian retreat at Kirkridge Retreat Center.John and Ken chose to address aging among gay men by developing a "saging" ritual that honored John McNeill as an elder among gay men and gay elders in general.

Subsequently, John and Ken led a series of retreats that dealt with gay-male spirituality. "Gay Male Rites of Passage: Moving beyond Coming Out to Being Out" examined unique aspects of gay-male identity development. "Water of Life: Rites of the Gay Male Spirit," explored the sources of gay spiritual experience. The third and final retreat, "Simply Divine: Rites of the Gay Male Spirit," encouraged participants to appreciate the holiness of the body and gay desire.

Also, during the 1990s, John and Ken, along with Ruth Wenger and Norma Beard, reinvigorated the Philadelphia chapter of the Brethren Mennonite Council for LGBTQ Concerns by sponsoring monthly luncheons. John and Ken also made contact with a number of young gay men and lesbian women who were dealing with homophobia and liberation in their particular contexts. Several Princeton Theological Seminary students found a safe space in their home during the years when that seminary’s president was promulgating the antigay treatise, "A Princeton Declaration," in the Presbyterian Church USA. Additionally, a number of social work students from Temple University’s School of Social Administration, where Ken works, got in touch with queer youth from various Kirkridge events and began to gather at Ken’s and John’s home. John and Ken found themselves the nucleus of an unofficial queer family.

When John moved to Philadelphia, he had joined Germantown Mennonite Church, the oldest Mennonite congregation in North America. The congregation began accepting gay and lesbian members about the time he joined in 1986. Although one of the congregation’s regional conferences, Franconia Mennonite Conference, was officially hostile to gay and lesbian people, it made a special agreement with the local congregation to permit a more tolerant approach. However, in the early 1990s, the conference, under fire from conservatives, abandoned an early decision to leave membership decisions to the congregation. It demanded the congregation conform to its antigay/antilesbian policies-effectively demanding the excommunication of gay and lesbian members. John was one of several congregational representatives who attempted to negotiate a "third-way" agreement to maintain a window of tolerance in the conference. However, after failing twice to excommunicate the congregation in open conference sessions, denominational leaders put out a mail-in ballot that provided no option to support the Germantown congregation. In 1998, the congregation was excommunicated.

The congregation’s final ties to the Mennonite denomination were cut by its other regional conference, Eastern District, when the congregation decided to ordain an openly gay man, David Weaver. John was again among the congregational representatives who attempted to preserve some level of tolerance on the part of the denomination, without success.

In between the time of the initial expulsion by one body and the final expulsion by the second, John’s activities were seriously curtailed. In the late 1990s, Primary Schlerosing Cholangitis, a serious liver disease, took its toll on John’s health. In September 2000, he received a liver transplant. Within a year, he was again able to pick up some leadership responsibilities in his local congregation and to preach from time to time.

John and Ken, together with members of their queer family, currently focus their energies on the development of retreat resources and space for queer and progressive activists.

(This biographical statement provided by John Linscheid.)

Biography Date: July, 2003

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