By Sarah Pulliam Bailey
(RNS) The Evangelical Lutheran Church in America on Wednesday (Aug. 14) elected the Rev. Elizabeth Eaton as the denomination’s first female presiding bishop. Eaton received 600 votes against incumbent Presiding Bishop Mark Hanson, who received 287.
Eaton, the current ELCA bishop of the Cleveland-based Northeast Ohio Synod, is married to the Rev. Conrad Selnick, an Episcopal priest. Like Hanson, she is considered a moderate who supported the denomination’s decision to allow partnered gay clergy while allowing room for churches to disagree, according to the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.
A native of Cleveland, she received a master of divinity degree from Harvard Divinity School.
Elizabeth Eaton was elected presiding bishop of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. Photo courtesy ELCA News Service
“We are a church that is overwhelmingly European in a culture that is increasingly pluralistic,” Eaton told the ELCA Churchwide Assembly in Pittsburgh shortly after the election.
“We need to welcome the gifts of those who come from different places, that is a conversation we need to have as a church.”
The ELCA, which has lost members nearly every year since its founding in 1987, experienced a dramatic drop when it lost nearly half a million members in 2010 and 2011.
Read more at http://www.religionnews.com/2013/08/14/lutherans-elect-elizabeth-eaton-first-female-presiding-bishop-of-elca/