http://www.post-gazette.com/stories/local/region/lutherans-still-searching-for-a-presiding-bishop-699257/
..."At a news conference, Bishop Eaton elaborated on the need to recognize and heal divisions. Lutheran theology is filled with paradox, she said, so that it would be a truly Lutheran witness for people to agree to disagree after "maybe being a little bit molded by an unfortunately very fractious and divided civil discourse."
Asked about nascent discussions with new denominations that broke with the ELCA after 2009, she said it would take work on both sides "to come to a place where we can have an open and civil dialogue."
"The manner in which those denominations were formed has been extremely painful to our church. It will not be something that will be quickly forgotten," she said. "But we are supposed to love our enemies ... and since these are actually our brothers and sisters -- and families might be tougher than enemies -- we will do what we can through God's grace because that is the only way that is going to happen."
The Episcopal Church also has a female presiding bishop -- Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori, elected in 2006 -- but that denomination is half the size of the ELCA. The second-largest Lutheran body in the United States, the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod, doesn't ordain women. The first female bishop in the ELCA -- and the second in the world -- was Bishop April Larson, elected in 1992.
Bishop Eaton thanked Bishop Larson for blazing the trail. When she was ordained in 1981, she said, she was usually the only woman at clergy gatherings where someone would say she wasn't "strident like other women."
Her reply was, "I don't have to be because they were the pioneers who made it possible for me."
Read more: http://www.post-gazette.com/stories/local/region/lutherans-still-searching-for-a-presiding-bishop-699257/#ixzz2c99oD1yf
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