Remembering Bishop Lowell E. Knutson, 1929-2025

Family and friends are remembering Bishop Lowell Eugene Knutson, and sharing this tribute delivered March 1 by his son Peter Knutson at Phinney Ridge Lutheran Church, where he was ordained, later serving as the minister of First Lutheran Church of West Seattle for about 20 years, and then becoming the Bishop of the Northwest Lutheran Synod:

Lowell Knutson was born in 1929 in Hannah, North Dakota, currently population 8. He was a descendant of Norwegian emigrant farmers. His ancestors were part of a massive outmigration. Poverty and the promise of America compelled one third of Norway’s population to emigrate. Lowell’s ancestors landed at Ellis Island in the 19th Century and they moved on to the farmlands of Minnesota and North Dakota.

Lowell’s dad Lawrence, one of nine children, ran a hardware store and then later sold tractors, all in North Dakota. Times were tough. Farmers went under and so did Lawrence’s business. In 1942 the business collapsed when the tractor factory he was repping switched to tank production. Grandpa K then set out for Seattle with daughter Jerry. They made it here and Lawrence got a job in the shipyard. He called back home to Fargo and told my Grandma Ida that “all she had to do was sell the house and bring the kids out to Seattle.” Ida always laughed about Lawrence telling her that’s “all she had to do.” But she did, and brought Lowell, Bob and Shirley out to Seattle.

Sports was the Seattle ticket for Lowell and brother Bob. They were pitcher and catcher for the Queen Anne High School Grizzlies when they weren’t delivering the Queen Anne News to a thousand customers. Lowell was halfback on the football team and played in his old school leather helmet for Coach John Cherberg in the annual Seattle vs. State of Washington football classic. He had great moves. His teammates said he had swivel hips and piano legs. Years later in his mid-60s Lowell could still juke his grandsons out of their socks.

He loved competition and didn’t like to lose at anything, including family games of Skipbo. Some years ago, when he was Bishop of the NW Lutherans, he was chosen to throw out the first pitch in the Kingdome at the Seattle Mariners game vs. Minnesota. It was Lutheran Day at the ballpark and he did not want to be embarrassed. After a week of practice with grandson Dylan he put it right across the plate to catcher Dan Wilson.

He was a good golfer too. Although one time after 12-year-old Dylan went golfing with Grandpa he came home to tell us, “I think Grandpa cheats!”

Brother Bob told me that in high school Lowell was always getting into fights. But he was always getting into fights standing up for somebody else. Once, Bob said Lowell got in trouble for a fight in the showers. Some big bully came into the shower and shoved a little guy out. Lowell then cold-cocked the bully and got sent to the principal’s office for a reprimand.

Lowell earned a college scholarship to Pacific Lutheran College. Their team was called the Gladiators. He lettered in football, basketball, baseball. His junior year he batted .407 and pitched to a 6-1 record. One story we often heard growing up was the time he was quarterbacking and threw the football out of the stadium in a game against College of Puget Sound. He threw a long bomb to a streaking receiver and a wind gust caught the football and carried it right out of the stadium. That made the papers.

He played his Gladiator basketball for Coach Marv Harshman, who later coached the University of Washington Huskies. Many years later after Lowell had become a minister and then the Northwest Bishop of the Evangelical Lutheran Church, he officiated at the funeral for Senator Warren Magnuson. During the service Lowell lost his place in the liturgy and caused some temporary chaos in the service. As we were walking out of church after Maggie’s service, Marv Harshman leaned over to me and said, “Lowell never could take signals.”

Lowell and Shirley, confirmation classmates, got married in 1951 right here at Phinney. Lowell was called to become a minister and Shirley agreed to move to Minnesota so Lowell could attend seminary. I suspect Mom had a hand in writing his papers.

He finished seminary and took his first call to Edison Lutheran Church in Skagit Valley. He was their first full-time minister and those farming families loved him. They loved our growing family — 5 kids in 7 years. Their church didn’t have much money but they built us a big parsonage amidst the pea fields and the daffodils.

Sometimes in Skagit Valley Dad would get paid in old roosters. I remember him at Roy Omdal’s farm, using a hatchet on a chopping block. As a kid it was an unforgettable sight to see those roosters running around with no heads. And later seeing mom plucking those birds in the sink.

There was one issue that came up in Lowell’s first church right away. The farmers did not want Lowell wearing his new religious vestments. They opposed “high church.”

Influenced by the 19th century teachings of the radical Norwegian lay preacher Hans Nielsen Hauge, they believed in the Dignity of Labor and Equality. As Haugeaners, they questioned the authority of the state and thought independently from the clergy. They wanted Lowell to understand that we are all equal, preacher and congregation.

But after Lowell told the farmers that his mom and mother-in-law had embroidered the stoles, they relented and told him he could wear the vestments a couple months until Christmas. After they got to know Lowell, they could see that their preacher was not on a high horse. So they accepted him vestments and all, even after Christmas.

Dad’s second call was to Everett, to Our Savior’s Lutheran Church. Everett was a tough industrial town that produced 2 by 4’s and toilet paper. The pulp mills made the air smell like rotten eggs. It was a labor town and people still remembered the massacre of 1916. The old single men would sit in the balcony of the church, some missing eyeballs and fingers, casualties of the mill. Sometimes the hobos would leave their cardboard camps on the railroad tracks and come up to the church looking for some help. As kids, we remember Lowell taking these rough, beaten-down guys to the corner grocer and buying them a can of beans and a loaf of bread.

Lowell ticked off some of the church elders when he endorsed a Republican for Congress in 1962. The old benefactors of the church came out of the Eugene Debs Socialist Party and did not want their minister on the wrong side of the class war. Over time, they found out that Lowell was not on the wrong side. His values were constant, even as his politics later evolved with Civil Rights and Vietnam.

What were his values? When we’d watch football on TV, I remember Lowell telling me, “you always root for the underdog.” That was his mantra. You always root for the underdog. And that’s what he did in his community service during the late 60’s and 70’s, whether working with Conscientious Objectors or other people at the margins.

He kept his faith understated. He didn’t wear it for show. He wasn’t going to tell people what to do from the pulpit. He didn’t talk God casually. He never talked theology with family, other than daily grace and the Christmas reading. He didn’t take the Lord’s name in vain, meaning he didn’t wear his Christianity on his sleeve.

The Church for him was Community. It was how you lived. It was people of all kinds. He believed you accept people where they’re at, as they are created. He enjoyed people. I was always amazed at how he could remember everyone’s name in the church.

Vietnam in Everett was a bitter time. It was not an easy thing to speak out against the war, for peace, especially in a milltown like Everett, when your own church was split, when families wanted to believe that their sacrifice was not in vain. Years later Dad wept when he watched a local documentary about the anti-war resistance during that time.

Civil Rights. It was 1971 and my brother Dave was graduating from Everett High School. The senior class was scheduled to hold its graduation party at the Elks Club, as was tradition. The Elks at that time did not permit non-whites to be members, although they granted an exception for the Senior Party. Lowell, Shirley with other parents and students decided to challenge this bigoted institution. They organized an alternative Senior Party at the Blake Island Long house. So that year there were two Senior parties as the class and the town split apart over institutional racism. Lowell and others bent that arc of justice a little bit in Everett. There were costs, but it was good trouble, as John Lewis would say.

His third and final church was First Lutheran in West Seattle. As First Lutheran minister and then later as Bishop, Lowell became a public figure in the community. He was in the Rotary Club, and in a coffee-drinking group known as the “West Seattle Senate.” The West Seattle Senate was an informal group of small business guys and locals who’d meet once a week at Vann’s Restaurant and drain endless pots of coffee as they discussed and debated local and world affairs.

Their coffee klatch roundtable became so well known in Seattle that journalists would drop in just to listen and take the community temperature on issues. Usually the topic was something like “When are we going to get a bridge to West Seattle?” or “What’s going on with mortgage rates?”

But in March 2003 when the United States invaded Iraq, the current topic was the war. Discussion was intense in the West Seattle Senate the day after the invasion. Big American flags were being hoisted high on the back of pickup trucks and on neighborhood porches. The guys were talking about the “shock and awe” on TV, the weapons of mass destruction, the dictator we were going to take out, the spectacular show of our bombs over Baghdad on CNN. Lowell sat there drinking his coffee and not saying anything. Finally he was asked, “What do you think, Lowell?” Lowell put his coffee cup down and just said, “You live by the sword, you die by the sword.”

Lowell used his civic prominence as Minister and as Northwest Bishop of the Evangelical Lutheran Church to root for the underdog: as a trustee of the Seattle community college system , as a public advocate for a fairer tax system, as a signer of a Christian apology to Native American religious leaders for suppression of their practice, as a founder of Open Door Ministries for all genders, as a member of Lutheran Peace Fellowship.

In his last few years, it was my wife Hing’s job to call Lowell every day and let him know what channel the Mariners, Huskies, Seahawks were on. We watched those two Seahawk Super Bowls together: the good one and the one where they should have given the ball to Marshawn Lynch at the end. I distinctly remember the final seconds of that second Super Bowl . As the Hawks were poised for the win in the red zone, Wilson threw that interception on the goal line. We were stunned. Silence. Then Mom asked, “What happens now?” Then Lowell said, “Balls! It’s Over!”

Finally, let me tell you my favorite Lowell sermon in West Seattle. Every now and then First Lutheran would have a kids. service. The children would all be in the front row of the sanctuary close to the altar, sometimes with their dogs. This was the Sunday when Lowell gave the children a special sermon, just for them.

He told the kids, “I’m going to tell you a story. My sister’s husband just came out to visit our family. His name is Uncle Steff. Now yesterday we were in downtown Seattle with Uncle Steff standing next to a building. Steff doesn’t have any hair on his head and he wasn’t wearing a hat. And up above us were a bunch of pigeons. Now what do pigeons sometimes do when they’re on the edge of a building sitting above your head?”

“Poop!” the kids yelled. “They Poop! Pigeons poop!”

Lowell goes, “Yep, that’s right, they poop! They pooped on Uncle Steff’s head! Now let me tell you the lesson of that story. Every story has a lesson.The lesson of this story is: It matters where you stand.”

And that’s the Lutheran lesson we can take home from Lowell’s life. It matters where you stand.

‘(WSB publishes West Seattle obituaries and memorial announcements by request, free of charge. Please email the text, and a photo if available, to westseattleblog@gmail.com)

Share This