The Evangelical Lutheran Church in America has elected a transgender bishop — the first of the key Christian faiths within the US to take action.
The Rev. Megan Rohrer, pastor of Grace Lutheran Church in San Francisco, who has appeared on TV’s “Queer Eye,” was elected to function bishop of the Sierra Pacific synod, the ECLA introduced.
“I’m humbled and honored, and conscious that this name is greater than me,” Rohrer, 41, stated after the ballots have been counted Saturday, later telling Faith Information Service (RNS) it was “an honor to be known as to serve.”
“Throughout this time when some think about trans individuals at their worst, Lutherans have as soon as once more declared that transgender individuals are lovely kids of God,” Rohrer stated.
“Thanks to everybody who has been praying for me and my household as I settle for this name.”
Rohrer, whose appointment is for six years, had already made ECLA historical past twice earlier than, because the first transgender individual to be ordained in 2006 after which the first to function a pastor when known as to Grace Lutheran in 2014.
The brand new bishop, who makes use of the pronouns they and them, on Tuesday addressed Christians who could also be confused by the historic appointment.
“God’s name extends to extra individuals than you’d anticipate, in additional locations than you’d anticipate and extra usually than you’d anticipate,” Rohrer tweeted, with the hashtag #iamLutheran.
Raised in South Dakota, Rohrer has recounted being expelled from a church youth group in Sioux Falls after popping out as a lesbian.
Then in faculty on the Lutheran Augustana College, fellow college students “would sing hymns after I walked by, to attempt to do away with my homosexual demons,” Rohrer informed KALW in 2014. “And I’d simply sing concord. I didn’t know what to do.”
A campus pastor at Augustana, nonetheless, inspired Rohrer to think about ministry, and in 2002 they moved to San Francisco to attend Pacific Lutheran Theological Seminary and later transferred to the LGBTQ-friendly Pacific College of Faith in Berkeley.
Now a group chaplain coordinator for the San Francisco Police Division, Rohrer is thought for advocating for LGBTQ rights in avenue activism.
“We have to all be as loud and as indignant because the individuals who need to declare that there are sorts of those who God can’t love,” they informed Cosmopolitan in 2017.
Rohrer’s profile was raised final yr with an look in “Queer Eye,” lending help to an overtly homosexual pastor in Philadelphia.
The Sierra Pacific Synod encompasses 180 congregations in Northern California and northern Nevada, with greater than 36,000 particular person members and about 13,000 worshippers attending on Sundays.
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