About Our Pastor
Dan Hooper, Pastor of Hollywood Lutheran Church
The Rev. Daniel M. Hooper was born in Bakersfield, California. Hooper was educated at California State Polytechnic University in San Luis Obispo, California, and studied at Pacific Lutheran Theological Seminary in Berkeley, California. After serving a year of internship in Long Lake, Illinois, he was ordained 1974 by the American Lutheran Church, and served congregations in inner-city Phoenix, Arizona, and Inglewood, California. Between those assignments, he served as a program director for Lutheran Campus Ministry–Southern California, as Director of Lutheran Olympic Ministry 1984 in Los Angeles, and as interim Executive Director of Ecumedia, the media and public interpretation office of the Southern California Ecumenical Council.
In 1985 Hooper co-authored “A Call for Dialog”—the first major position paper of Lutherans Concerned/North America, which was addressed to the Lutheran church bodies in the United States and Canada. As a result of response to that paper, he begin writing and teaching extensively about sexual ethics, relationships and celibacy.
Fourteen years after being outed and removed from the Lutheran ministry in 1988, Hooper was admitted in 2002 to the roster of the Extraordinary Candidacy Project (now Extraordinary Lutheran Ministries), a credentialing authority which parallels that of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (except that it lacks the ELCA’s requirement of celibacy for LGBT candidates and pastors), and helps to supply qualified LGBT candidates to ministries partly supported by Lutheran Lesbian & Gay Ministries.
In 2002 Hooper also began developing and writing a major CD-Rom based resource package for Lutherans Concerned/North America. The encyclopedic "Reconciling Ministry Planner 1.0" consists of 600 pages of resources to help congregations welcome sexual minorities and offer help and hospitality to those traditionally overlooked or intentionally excluded from the church.
Hooper met his life partner Carl in June 1976 in Phoenix. In February 2004, with along 4,000 other couples they were married in San Francisco City Hall with a marriage license that has since been declared legally invalid but is has been contested in a California Supreme Court case. They both have long been active in Lutherans Concerned, were founding members of the Phoenix chapter (1977) and helped re-start the Los Angeles Chapter (1980). Hooper presently serves on its Steering Committee. Hooper and Hunter were publicly recognized by Lutherans Concerned/North America in 2004 for their life-long contributions, and awarded honorary life-time memberships
That same year, Hooper returned to active parish ministry when he was elected to serve as our Pastor. As a result of its selection of Hooper as Pastor (who is not on the ELCA Clergy Roster) the congregation was disciplined by Bishop Dean Nelson of the Southwest California Synod.
Pastor Dan is also an active member of the Interfaith Gay and Lesbian Clergy Association of Los Angeles (www.outclergyla.org).
Feel free to visit Pastor Dan's Blog at www.indwellingspirit.org and his theological site at www.danhooper.info.
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