The Evangelical Lutheran Church of America on Saturday installed its first openly transgender bishop in a service held at San Francisco’s Grace Cathedral.
SAN FRANCISCO – The Evangelical Lutheran Church of America on Saturday installed its first openly transgender bishop in a service held at San Francisco’s Grace Cathedral.
Rev. Megan Rohrer will lead one of the church’s 65 synods, overseeing nearly 200 congregations in northern California and northern Nevada.
“My call is … to live up to the same messy, loving things I did before,” Rohrer told the faithful. “But most of all, if you let me, and I think you do, my hope is to love you and, beyond that, love what you love.”
Rohrer was elected in May to serve a six-year term as bishop of the Sierra Pacific Synod after his current bishop announced his retirement.
“I put myself in this role because a diverse community of Lutherans in Northern California and Nevada voted with prayer and reflection to do something historic,” Rohrer said in a statement. “My facility will celebrate as much as possible when we trust God to shepherd us forward.”
Rohrer, who uses the pronoun “they,” previously served as pastor of Grace Lutheran Church in San Francisco and as the city’s coordinating chaplain to the city’s police department, and also helped minister to the LGBT community of homeless people. the city. They studied religion at Augustan University in their hometown of Sioux Falls, South Dakota, before moving to California to pursue a master’s and doctoral degree at Pacific Religion School in Berkeley.
Rohrer became one of seven LGBTQ pastors accepted by the progressive Evangelical Lutheran church in 2010 after allowing pastors to be ordained in same-sex relationships. Rohrer is married and has two children.
The church is one of the largest Christian denominations in the United States with about 3.3 million members.
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