Anchorage Daily News

PALMER -- Don't let it be said that Palmer minister and community activist Howard Bess is lazy.

At 80, he has a long to-do list and a longer list of accomplishments that, for Valley residents, have brought help for people whose needs tend to go unnoticed.

Bess celebrated his 50th year as an ordained American Baptist minister on Sunday by retiring from his role as pastor of the Palmer church.

In an interview Monday, he said he has several goals to keep him busy, such as helping convicts released from prison with housing and other needs, and developing a foundation that would seek support from longtime city residents to pay for city needs.

In addition to leading Church of the Covenant, Bess helped found Valley Christian Conference.

The broad coalition of churches oversees nonprofit organizations that provide housing for special-needs clients, resources for the mentally ill, funding for local charities and food for those who can't afford groceries.

He's also championed fair treatment in churches for gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered people in Alaska and across the nation.

He organized efforts to enliven Palmer's economy and create new arts and cultural opportunities.

Carolyn Covington, a deacon and clerk at Church of the Covenant, which Bess has led for 20 years, blames his Midwestern roots for his perpetual state of busy-ness.

"There are many things in this community that would have never been there if it hadn't been for Howard Bess," Covington said.

"In the past 18 years, I've had a lot of irons in the fire," Bess said, adding that he's been sort-of retired for that long.

His role at Church of the Covenant hasn't been a full-time salaried one, he said.

CHALLENGING ISSUE

Belief in the church as an agent of social change is a concept Bess said he grasped early in his Fairbury, Ill., upbringing.

"I do believe the gospel is not just something you believe, but something you do," Bess said.

Bess's activism often bled into his role as a pastor and, more than once, landed him or his congregation in hot water.

It was while he was a pastor in Santa Barbara, Calif., in the 1960s and '70s that he first championed fair treatment of gays and lesbians.

When a married man in his California congregation, at an office appointment, told Bess that he was homosexual, Bess said he worked to understand how to address the issue while remaining true to his beliefs, including that a minister must never reject someone.

He wrote a research paper and read it to his congregation, aware he was taking a big risk.

"What happened was more people started coming out of the closet," he said.

A few years later, he moved to Anchorage to lead a church.

There he increased his involvement in the fledgling Alaska gay rights movement. He helped found Identity Inc., a group aimed at strengthening the gay community in the state, and marched in gay pride parades.

"I became very active, and along about that time, the AIDS crisis was starting to bloom. More and more gay people were coming to church," he said.

MOVE TO PALMER

Not everyone supported his stance.

His church board asked him to lower his profile. He resigned. A year later, he and wife, Darlene, moved to Palmer to lead Church of the Covenant.

There, the small church gained notoriety when Bess's book, "Pastor, I Am Gay" was published. The church was kicked out, or "disfellowshipped," of the American Baptist Churches of Alaska.

But thanks to connections Bess had with the American Baptist Churches in the U.S.A., the church stayed under the umbrella of the larger organization.

WIDE EMBRACE

"I can't speak for other members. I just know that to me, it seemed to fit in with the philosophy of being American Baptist," said Sarah Welton, a Matanuska-Susitna Borough School Board member and daughter of an American Baptist minister.

"We're supposed to have the freedom to choose to interpret the Bible, as long as we've done our study."

Welton said Bess's stance on social justice issues, and his willingness to welcome everyone into his church, drew her in.

That's not to say the group is a bunch of radicals. People are surprised at how traditional the services are, Welton said.

Covington said a Sunday morning study group is more free-thinking, sometimes reviewing books and other times using current events to spark discussion about how congregants can help their communities.

"We spent an entire Sunday speaking about how we could be more gospel-like and help Vic Kohring," Covington said, referring to the former state lawmaker who began a prison term this week.

Without Bess at the helm, Welton said she and other church deacons would share duties leading services.

Covington said she didn't believe there was a lot of urgency in securing a new pastor right away.

Bess will still be involved peripherally, she said.

"We gave Howard the title of pastor emeritus," she said.

"That means that he's there; if we ask him to do something, he will ... but it removes him from the onus of having to be responsible."

Find Daily News reporter Rindi White online at www.adn.com/contact/rwhite or call 352-6709.

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