The Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA) has installed its first openly transgender bishop.
Rev. Dr. Megan Rohrer was installed on Sunday, Sep. 12, as the church’s Bishop of the Sierra Pacific Synod. They will oversee 182 congregations across northern and central California, as well as north Nevada.
Rohrer was elected in May and will serve a six-year term when the current bishop retires.
“I step into this role because a diverse community of Lutherans in Northern California and Nevada prayerfully and thoughtfully voted to do a historic thing,” Rohrer said in a statement. “My installation will celebrate all that is possible when we trust God to shepherd us forward.”
Rohrer previously served as pastor of Grace Lutheran Church in San Francisco, CA, and chaplain coordinator for San Francisco’s police department. Rohrer was one of seven LGBTQ+ pastors accepted by the ELCA in 2010 when the church first began allowing the ordination of LGBTQ+ pastors.
Rohrer studied religion at Augustana University in their hometown Sioux Falls, South Dakota, before moving to California to pursue a master’s and a doctoral degree at Berkeley’s Pacific School of Religion.
Rohrer is also known for ministering directly to San Francisco’s homeless and LGBTQ+ communities.
“My call is… to be up to the same messy, loving things I was up to before,” Rohrer told worshippers during their installation at San Francisco’s Grace Cathedral. “But mostly, if you’ll let me, and I think you will, my hope is to love you and beyond that, to love what you love.”
