Largest US Lutheran denomination installs first Black presiding bishop : NPR

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Talia Sprague/AP The Evangelical Lutheran Church in America put in the Rev. Yehiel Curry as its first Black presiding bishop Saturday, a landmark second for the predominantly white denomination.

"It hasn't actually hit me but," Curry informed The Related Press every week earlier than his set up. "The truth that you are a primary."

Curry succeeds the Rev. Elizabeth Eaton, who served for 12 years and was the primary lady to steer the ELCA.

Throughout Eaton's tenure, Curry watched because the ELCA convention of bishops went from majority males to majority ladies.

"I feel her presence mattered," he stated. "And I am hopeful that if presence issues that we'll begin to see increasingly leaders of coloration."

A proper ceremony at Central Lutheran Church in Minneapolis kicked off Curry's six-year time period, which started Oct. 1. He was elected on the ELCA Churchwide Meeting on July 30 in Phoenix.

American Lutheranism is usually stereotyped by its Scandinavian and German roots and focus within the higher Midwest. By some measures, the ELCA is greater than 95% white. But it surely has invested in native congregations of coloration and multicultural ministries, whereas sustaining ties to rising Lutheran church buildings globally.

"He's representing a really white denomination as a Black man from america. I feel it is a daunting, daunting name," stated the Rev. Leila Ortiz, a good friend who not too long ago completed a time period as ELCA bishop of the Metropolitan Washington, D.C., Synod. "I belief him, and I belief God and I can not wait to look at."

As chief of the most important American Lutheran Church physique, Curry will face challenges frequent to different mainline Protestant denominations, which in recent times have weathered theological disputes over LGBTQ+ inclusion and precipitous membership declines. The ELCA has dropped from 5.3 million members in 1988 to 2.7 million members as we speak.

Since 2009, the ELCA has blessed same-sex marriages and welcomed LGBTQ+ clergy, elevating its first overtly homosexual regional bishop in 2013 and its first overtly transgender regional bishop in 2021.

Curry, 53, is simply the fifth presiding bishop of the ELCA, which fashioned from a merger of denominations in 1988. Till his election, he was one in all 65 synodal, or regional, bishops. He led the Metropolitan Chicago Synod, the place the ELCA's headquarters can also be situated.

A novel path to Lutheran Church management Born the seventh of 11 youngsters on the south facet of Chicago, Curry grew up Catholic and attended Catholic colleges by school. He was a social employee earlier than changing into a public schoolteacher.

When he and his spouse first visited Shekinah Chapel, they had been of their mid-twenties, and it was a fledging congregation in Chicago. "I by no means paid consideration that it was in a Lutheran Church."

The church had a mentoring program for younger Black males and boys that he thought may serve a few of his center faculty college students.

"For me, it was the standard Black worship expertise besides it was slightly bit extra modern," he stated. "There was poetry, there was liturgical dance, there was a band and reward and worship."

Shekinah Chapel grew from an ELCA program to an official congregation. Curry went from a lay chief to a extra formal management function whereas going to seminary. He was ordained inside the ELCA in 2009.

"That is unusual the place you get to steer in a spot the place you've got been raised," Curry stated. "I now acknowledge how lucky I'm."

He was a part of the Theological Schooling for Rising Ministries (TEEM) program, which the ELCA says prepares ministers in "ethnic-specific, multicultural, rural and inner-city settings."

His path to ministry highlights a technique of rising new and numerous congregations inside older church constructions.

The range of Lutherans Curry's forerunners as African American Lutheran leaders embrace the Rev. Nelson Wesley Trout, the primary Black ELCA synod bishop, and the Rev. Will Herzfeld, a Black presiding bishop for a predecessor ELCA denomination.

"Blacks have been across the Lutheran Church because it offered itself in New Amsterdam within the 1600s. We have now been current in some small approach from the start," stated the Rev. James Thomas, a retired ELCA seminary professor and creator of "A Rumor of Black Lutherans."

Across the globe, the most important and fastest-growing Lutheran church buildings are in Africa.

A good thing about Curry's management is that it could assist elevate "the truth that African Individuals have been contributing to Lutheranism for a really very long time, and never simply right here in america however world wide and in Africa," stated the Rev. Yolanda Denson-Byers, who wrote "See Me, Consider Me," a e book on the challenges leaders of coloration face within the primarily white ELCA.

Bishop Regina Hassanally of the ELCA Southeastern Minnesota Synod stated Curry's elevation is a twin name — for him and the denomination.

"There generally is a temptation to suppose that calling a pacesetter of coloration is sufficient," she stated. "However the actuality is that it means creating helps and infrastructure and truly permitting that particular person to steer out of all of their presents and their full identification, not only one piece of their identification."

Curry stated his targets embrace exploring methods for the ELCA to be a extra linked church, from native congregations up by the hierarchy. Together with being a welcoming and thriving church, it is one of many targets the denomination has already set.

"Typically you provide you with these distinctive statements and techniques, however then we transfer on as transition occurs," he stated. "I wish to take one thing that we have affirmed already and possibly dig slightly deeper."