News
By the staff of The Lutheran, ELCA News Service and Religion News Service
Women take charge In quick succession since May, three women—all in their 40s—were cho- sen to lead historic large churches in major cities. Shannon Johnson Kershner is the first female solo senior pastor of Chicago’s Fourth Presbyterian Church; Amy But- ler leads New York City’s Riverside Church; and Ginger Gaines-Cirelli serves Foundry United Method- ist Church, Washington, D.C. “The truth is that for years, it was all men; in some places it still is, and nobody bats an eye,” Gaines-Cirelli said. “So the fact that we are live-streaming to the world this other vision is kind of prophetic.” All three said they look forward to the day they’re viewed simply as their congregation’s pas- tor, rather than its woman pastor.
MICHAEL D. WATSON “ ELCA response to Ebola goes on W
e need food,” said D. Jensen Seyenkulo, bishop of the Lutheran Church in Liberia.
“There is a saying [here] now: ‘If we don’t die of Ebola, we will die of star- vation.’ ” When ELCA Lutheran Disaster
Response sent an initial $100,000 Sept. 25 to help contain the Ebola outbreak in West Africa, a large por- tion went toward food aid. The Lutheran Church in Liberia
and the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Sierra Leone received $25,000 and $15,000, respectively, to provide oil, fish and rice. ACT Alliance (working through Lutheran Development Ser- vice in Liberia) received $50,000 for awareness and prevention activities. Lutheran Development Service
also hired a contractor to ensure that an isolation center being built at Phebe Hospital and School of Nursing in Monrovia, Liberia, meets World Health Organization standards. Liberian Lutherans are raising awareness about prevention through
the church’s “Stand Against Ebola” campaign. Seyenkulo said there is also an
increase in deaths from other curable diseases, which the overstretched health system can’t prioritize. Despite a nationwide quarantine
in September, Bishop Thomas J. Barnett of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Sierra Leone, said, “We are yet to be appraised of any gains regarding the Ebola disease itself. [Yet] we give thanks to God for spar- ing mercies and for the knowledge that there are others out there who continue to be with us in prayers.” Members of Incarnation Lutheran
Church, Kenema, Sierra Leone, are helping distribute basic food supplies to quarantined households and Ebola survivors. To help, send checks (write “Ebola
outbreak response” on the memo line) to ELCA Lutheran Disaster Response, Gift Processing Center, P.O. Box 1809, Merrifield, VA 22116- 8009; or give by credit card at 800- 638-3522 or
www.elca.org/disaster.
Vestments of merit
“Festive Red,” the vestments worn by ELCA Presiding Bishop Elizabeth A. Eaton at her installation, won an award of merit in an international design competition, CodaWorx. Artist Linda Witte Henke and her studio partner, Christine Felde, are members of Bethlehem Lutheran Church, Indianapolis. The collection was commissioned in August 2013 when Eaton was elected and introduced at her Oct. 5 installation in the University of Chicago’s Rockefeller Chapel. The project included two ceremonial copes, one chasuble, three stoles and one dalmatic.
Terrorists get it wrong More than 120 Muslim scholars worldwide joined an open letter to the “fighters and followers” of the Islamic State, denouncing them as un-Islamic. The 18-page letter, released Sept. 24 and written in Ara- bic, picks apart the extremist ideol- ogy of the brutal militants seeking to establish a transnational Islamic state in Iraq and Syria: “It is forbid- den in Islam to torture”; “It is forbid- den in Islam to attribute evil acts to God”; and “It is forbidden in Islam to declare people non-Muslims until he (or she) openly declares disbelief.” The scholars place “Islamic State” in quotes, and ask people to stop using
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