Yesterday in Church, toward the end of the service, came the usual announcements. Except they weren't just the usual announcements of groups that would be meeting that week and calls for sign up for various things. This week our pastor was pleased to announce that the ELCA (Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, my own particular brand of Lutheran) had chosen as the presiding Bishop of our Church, our denomination, a woman, Elizabeth Eaton.
Okay, now I was sitting up straight and listening with really full attention. While the ELCA has had women pastors and local bishops for some time now, selecting a woman to run the whole thing and to speak for us as a group -- well, it's kind of like the Berlin Wall falling. To hear that she was Harvard trained, which means she may have known Krister Stendhal, the head of the Harvard Divinity School who attended the church I went to in Cambridge during my Harvard days, that was icing on the cake. Change and tradition both.
But Pastor wasn't finished yet. Not only had my church put a woman in charge, it had passed -- by overwhelming votes -- a series of resolutions calling on member churches and their members to advocate for gun control measures that would require universal background checks, measures to stop gun trafficking and require reporting of lost or stolen guns, and measures that sought support for same gender couples and their families and measures that sought comprehensive immigration reform with a path to residency and citizenship. Way to go, folks.
This is most certainly not the conservative Lutheran Church I grew up in and I am so glad of it. We've come a long way, baby. As our pastor said with a big grin on her face, We rock!!
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