Megan Rohrer made history on Saturday after winning an episcopal election in the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA). The victory will make Rohrer the first transgender person to ever serve as a bishop in any major faith denomination in the United States.
“I am humbled and honored and aware that this call is bigger than me,” they told their fellow members of the faith following Saturday’s win. “My hope is that your grandkids will call you, and your kids will call you, and your friends will call you, and ask you about your faith. And when they call, tell them how much you love Jesus and why Jesus’ faith in you meant why you could have faith in me.”
A pastor who has served at San Francisco’s Grace Lutheran Church for 7 years, Rohrer was elected on the 5th round of ballots during an online assembly, according to the Associated Press. The 41-year-old will serve as a bishop in Sacramento’s Sierra Pacific synod, which oversees 180 congregations, and will reportedly begin in July.
Bishops in the ELCA, which counts 3.3 million members across the U.S., are elected for 6-year posts.
Before ballots were cast this weekend, Rohrer told their fellow faith leaders that they want to be the “kind of bishop that moves whatever stumbling blocks might have been placed before you, who roots for you, and worships with you.” They campaigned on addressing low-income housing and homelessness, as well as addressing potentially discriminatory policies within the ELCA, as the AP reports.
LGBTQ+ advocates celebrated Rohrer’s triumph as a major victory for inclusion within religious leadership. GLAAD senior director Ross Murray said the election “demonstrates that Lutherans are recognizing the leadership that LGBTQ people can bring to the church.” Rodrigo Heng-Lehtinen of the National Center for Transgender Equality (NCTE) added that having Rohrer to represent historically marginalized groups “shows that progress is possible.”
“It confirms that the more everyday Americans get to know their transgender neighbors, the more they learn we share many of the same dreams and values,” Heng-Lehtinen, who is set to become NCTE’s next executive director, told the New York Times. “Everyone, including those who are transgender, deserve to be welcomed by their faith.”
But the road to progress was a long one for Rohrer. While the ELCA passed a resolution in 1991 stating that LGBTQ+ people “are welcome to participate fully” in the church, it mandated that queer clergy members remain celibate. Rohrer was ordained in defiance of that policy in 2006 through a program then referred to as the Extraordinary Candidacy Project (ECP), which was created to expand LGBTQ+ representation in ELCA leadership.
That ordination made Rohrer the first transgender pastor ever to serve in the ECLA, and they made history again 4 years later when the church repealed its discriminatory celibacy mandate. Rohrer was among 7 pastors who “had previously been barred from ministry to be recognized as clergy members,” as the Times reports, and the only trans member of the group.
Even before then, Rohrer faced opposition in the ELCA due to their LGBTQ+ identity. Before coming out as trans after college, they publicly identified as a lesbian and were subjected to harassment from other members of the Sioux Falls, South Dakota church in their hometown.
“The people who were in my religion classes with me would sing hymns when I walked by, to try to get rid of my gay demons,” they told the San Francisco radio station KALW in 2016. “And I would just sing harmony. I didn’t know what to do.”
But after finally finding acceptance in their faith, Rohrer said they hope to challenge the idea that the trans community don’t have a place in Christianity. In comments to the Sacramento ABC news affiliate KXTV, they expressed their belief that transgender people are part of a divine plan, saying their existence shows that “God’s love is way bigger than we can imagine.”
“It just means God’s showing them there’s more,” Rohrer said.
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