wfn.org | Longtime Lutheran Government Liaison in Washington Dies

[NEWS <NEWS@ELCA.ORG>]

ELCA NEWS SERVICE

April 13, 1999

LONGTIME LUTHERAN GOVERNMENT LIAISON
IN WASHINGTON DIES
99-14-91-JB

     CHICAGO (ELCA) -- The Rev. Robert E. Van Deusen, a retired pastor
of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA) who served some 30
years as Lutheran church liaison with the federal government, died March
31 in Charlotte, N.C., one day before his 90th  birthday.
     Memorial services were held in Charlotte and in Columbia, S.C.
     During his career Van Deusen held a variety of positions in
Washington, D.C., including his last position as executive director for
the Office of Public Affairs and Government Relations for the former
Lutheran Council in the U.S.A., which he left in 1975.  His role was to
represent the interests of Lutheran church bodies with representatives
of federal agencies and congressional committees.  He also communicated
significant developments in government to the church and helped organize
seminars for study of public policy issues.
     He edited the council's "Focus on Public Affairs," a semimonthly
publication of analysis and comment.
     Van Deusen was ordained in the former United Lutheran Church in
America in 1935.  He served congregations in New York, Florida and
Missouri, and in 1945 became a National Lutheran Council (NLC) service
pastor ministering to military personnel in Washington, D.C..
     In Washington, Van Deusen was named secretary of the NLC Bureau of
Service to Military Personnel.  In 1949 he was elected Washington
Secretary of the NLC Division of Public Relations, a post he held until
the work of the NLC ended in 1966.
     With the formation in 1967 of the Lutheran Council in the U.S.A.,
Van Deusen was elected director of its Office of Public Affairs.  In
1973 it was renamed the Office of Public Affairs and Government
Relations.
     The civil rights struggle in the early 1960s was a turning point
for church groups working with the government, he once said in an
interview.  Churches deserve significant credit for the passage of the
Civil Rights Act of 1964, he said.
     Throughout his career, Van Deusen said he learned that, although
the church and state must remain separate, "the church as a social
institution cannot avoid having a share in influencing public policy."
     "When the churches are silent on an  important moral issue, they
leave the impression that the questions involved are not urgent or
relevant," he said. "When the churches and their members speak out on a
policy question which involves basic human values, they are listened to
and become part of the democratic decision-making process."
     Following his service in Washington, Van Deusen served full-time
as associate pastor of Ebenezer Lutheran Church, Columbia, from 1975 to
1978, and later, he served part-time there for a number of years.
     Van Deusen was born April 1, 1909, in St. Johnsville, N.Y.  He
majored in Greek and graduated summa cum laude from Hartwick College in
Oneonta, N.Y., where he was the college's first enrolled student.  Van
Deusen later attended Hartwick Theological Seminary in Brooklyn, N.Y.
     In 1946 he received a master's degree in psychology from Syracuse
(N.Y.) University.  In 1968 he earned a doctorate in international
relations at The American University in Washington.
     Hartwick College also presented him with an honorary Doctor of
Divinity degree in 1953.
     In 1933 Van Deusen married the former Ruth Sarah Brown, who died
in October 1997.  The Van Deusens have two children, Elizabeth J. Dutton
of Charlotte and Robert John Van Deusen, Columbia.

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