Longtime Lutheran Government Liaison in Washington Dies

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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