Live by wokeness, die by wokeness.
A little over a year ago, the Rev. Megan Rohrer was all over the news as the first transgender bishop of any major denomination. On May 8, 2021, the Sierra Pacific Synod of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America installed her as the head of roughly 200 congregations in California and Nevada, The Washington Post reported.
(While Rohrer was born female, she uses the pronouns “they/them” and identifies as trans; as The Federalist noted at the time of her election, she “does not, however, seem to fully identify as a man, and at 41, her ‘transition’ seems to still be in process.”)
Establishment outlets like the Post and NPR, not usually given to cataloguing the goings-on at the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (or any church, for that matter) dedicated plenty of column-space to her election. It wasn’t that God had much to do with the coverage, though. The message, as if you even had to ask, involved tacit praise for the church for throwing that hidebound ol’ Bible by the wayside.
(Here at The Western Journal, we’ve chronicled how the establishment media will only report on religion positively when it follows the woke narrative. Anything else, and Christians are generally depicted as pro-wrestling heels. We’re bucking the trend by providing news and analysis from a Christian, conservative perspective. If you support our coverage, please consider subscribing.)
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Now, Rohrer is out as bishop, thanks to allegations of racism.
According to an Associated Press report, Rohrer resigned in a June 4 letter amid criticism over how she handled the dismissal of a popular Latino pastor in December. Namely, while wearing a bulletproof vest in a church for Hispanic congregants on a feast day — the Feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe, an important day for the Hispanic faithful.
The feast commemorates apparitions of the Virgin Mary to an Aztec convert to Christianity in 1531. In the Catholic church, the feast day, Dec. 12, is recognized as a Liturgical Holy Day for all of South America, according to the Catholic News Agency.
Rohrer had shown up at the church to announce the dismissal of Pastor Nelson Rabell-González from the Misión Latina Luterana in Stockton, California, whom Rohrer’s synod council had voted to fire the day before.
Should this bishop have resigned?
In addition to wearing a bulletproof vest during the announcement of the dismissal, Rohrer was also accused of smirking during her remarks, according to the U.K. Daily Mail. She also threatened to call the police on the two congregation-members when they refused to leave.
The bulletproof vest she chalked up to a fear for her life, according to the Daily Mail. The alleged smirk was attributed to the bishop’s autism by church leaders.
But together, the bullet proof vest and the threat to call the police, in leftist orthodoxy, added up to the sin of racism — a leftist line that can’t be crossed without devastating consequences.
As for the pastor’s dismissal, it reportedly came after an investigation into verbal harassment and retaliation against Rabell-González, according to the AP. He denied the allegations.
The situation at the church was ripe for misunderstanding on the day the incident took place, the Daily Mail reported.
“The mostly Mexican immigrant congregants of the Mision Latina Luterana congregation had no idea their pastor was fired on December 12, according to the panel’s investigation. Churchgoers had planned an elaborate program that day with mariachi singers, traditional dancers and performances by children, all led by Rabell-González.”
The scene was chaotic, with members of the congregation calling the removal “unfair” and “racist,” according to the AP.
“Pastor Nelson has worked a lot for this day to happen. He has done a lot for our community. He has fought for our rights,” one congregant said in Spanish on a video of the incident, the AP reported.
Furthermore, Rohrer and other leaders refused to tell congregants whether the allegations against the pastor were sexual in nature when they were asked, the AP reported.
Rohrer apologized in December, according to Religion News Service, saying she “did not understand the impact on the greater church.”
On May 27, the lead bishop for the denomination announced she had requested Rohrer’s resignation from the synod. “There are issues of broken trust at all levels, from individual members and communities to the broader church, which will need work to repair,” the Rev. Elizabeth Eaton wrote in the report, according to AP.
Meanwhile, as Religion News Service reported, the church’s Latin Ministries Association was more harsh, accusing Rohrer of “racist actions” and showing a “lack of empathy and understanding toward their Latinx siblings” for removing Rabell-González just before the Feast of the Virgin Guadalupe.
Facing suspension and removal, Rohrer decided to resign, instead.
After listening to the important and prayerful conversation at the Sierra Pacific Synod Assembly, I spent some time with my family and then had a conversation with the Synod Council. I resigned from the office of Bishop, effective around 4pm on June 4th. 1/3 pic.twitter.com/1wdBPsCzjw
— Megan Rohrer (@mmrohrer) June 6, 2022
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“The constant misinformation, bullying and harassment has taken too hard a toll in the Synod I love, my family and myself,” the bishop said in a letter.
In the Twitter thread, she also noted the church “has decided to move forward with a discipline process, even after I resigned, without providing any specifics about what I allegedly did, and that appears to be in conflict with their own procedures.”
The ELCA has decided to move forward with a discipline process, even after I resigned, without providing any specifics about what I allegedly did, and that appears to be in conflict with their own procedures. 3/3
— Megan Rohrer (@mmrohrer) June 6, 2022
But then, what should she have expected? The fact she was a bishop in the first place should have indicated her church’s own “procedures” have more to do with where the winds of wokeness carry it than with any firm biblical anchor.
After all, one doesn’t need to get out of Genesis 1 to find this: “So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.”
While the church should have genuine sympathy with Megan Rohrer’s confusion, it has instead enabled it, revealing its own confusion and worldliness in the process.
The pieties of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America don’t involve Godly piety — and unfortunately for her, the left’s very human standards of holiness are impossible to live up to.
