A woman pretending to be a man was installed by the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America as its bishop on Sept. 11 in San Francisco’s Grace Cathedral.
The church is one of the larger Christian denominations in the United States, with about 3.3 million members.
The Rev. Megan Rohrer will oversee nearly 200 congregations in Northern California and northern Nevada, reported NPR.
Rohrer was elected in May to a six-year term as bishop of the Sierra Pacific Synod after the body’s current bishop announced he would retire.
“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, who refers to herself as “they,” previously served as pastor of Grace Lutheran Church in San Francisco. She was also a chaplain coordinator for the city’s police department and helped minister to the city’s homeless and LGTBQ community.
She studied religion at Augustana University in her hometown of Sioux Falls, S.D., before moving to California to pursue master and doctoral degrees at the Pacific School of Religion in Berkeley.
Rohrer is one of seven LGBTQ pastors anointed by the progressive Evangelical Lutheran church in 2010 after it allowed ordination of homosexuals. She is married and has two children.
