Rev. Elizabeth Eaton

Image via RNS/Emily McFarlan Miller

It was her desire to hear the stories of real people — “not just faceless refugees or immigrants” — that brought the Rev. Elizabeth A. Eaton to a refugee resettlement agency that provides a range of services to refugees in the Chicago area.

“Especially now, when there’s this fear that’s been stirred up, and anti-refugee sentiment, it’s really critical to say, ‘No, these people are our grandparents, our aunts and uncles,” said the presiding bishop of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, the nation’s largest Lutheran denomination.

QR Blog Editor 8-14-2013

The Evangelical Lutheran Church in America elected the denomination's first female presiding bishop today. In a vote of 600 to 287, the Rev. Elizabeth Eaton, bishop of the ELCA Northeastern Ohio Synod, will take over from current Presiding Bishop Rev. Mark Hanson. Religion News Service reports:

“When I stood before you 12 years, I told you this is not an election won, this is a call received. And now this call has been extended to Bishop Eaton,” Hanson said at the assembly. “This is a humble and a holy privilege to serve the gospel as the pastor of this whole church.”

Read more here.