The Rev Jana Jeruma-Grinberga, whose parents were Latvian refugees but who was born in England, will be consecrated as the church’s first female bishop on Saturday at a ceremony in the City of London.
She will take over from the Rt Rev Walter Jagucki as the head of the Lutheran Church in Great Britain, one of 10 Lutheran groups based in the country, and the service will be witnessed by fellow worshippers from around the world.
Her pioneering appointment has been welcomed by Christina Rees, the chairman of Women and the Church, who is a leading campaigner in the struggle to get female bishops installed in Anglican dioceses.
Of course she has a hyphenated name. Makes perfect sense.
AP+
This is a mild surprise, as I would have thought that the Moravian Church or some Pentecostalist group or another would already have chosen a female CEO and termed her a “bishop.”
#1—Lots of people, both male and female, have hyphenated last names. Does such a name violate Biblical proscriptions in some way?
I suspect ember you are feeling defensive about the double surname thing as practiced in the USA. In Britain, double or triple surnames, traditionally, come about when a man takes his wife’s name (and arms, if she comes from an armigerous family) by Deed Poll, thereby creating a ‘double barreled’ name. Ralph and Joseph Feinnes, the actors, actually bear the surname Twisleton-Wykeham-Feinnes due to past marriages with important heiresses. In British society, if a woman has no brothers she becomes the heiress of her name, which is heredible by her children IF it is legally taken on by her husband or a descendant. As for Jana, I don’t know anything about how such things are done in Lativa, but checking out her Facebook profile it does seem that she could have done it for feminist motives. Be that as it may, it does not seem that the Lativan Lutheran Church as real, tactile Apostolic Succession, so unless she’s getting some bishop with such succession to ordain her, she’ll be among those called a bishop by title only. And, besides, there’s still the question whether women can be real bishops apart from merely canonical bishops.
Isn’t that just special.
I don’t think that the Lutheran Church in Great Britain is canonically affiliated with the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Latvia. Dr Tighe can correct me if I’m wrong, but the ELCL doesn’t ordain women to the pastorate (nor, obviously, consecrate them to the episcopate). The Evangelical Lutheran Church of Latvia is partnered with at least one district of the Lutheran Church – Missouri Synod, a conservative Lutheran group who do not ordain women to the pastorate.
As to historic succession, that depends on whether the Church of Sweden has bishops in succession or not, and what has happened since the inception of the Latvian Church as a canonical body. I’m not sure what the status is now, but the first two bishops of the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Latvia were consecrated to the episcopate by (Swedish) Archbishop Nathan Söderblom in 1922.
At any rate, the connection with the Lutheran Church in Great Britain appears only to be ethnic.
The ELCL is in full “altar and pulpit fellowship” with the LC-MS (as are the Lutheran Churches of Belarus, Ingria and Lithuania in that region).
All the Baltic-area Lutheran churches (those I mentioned above, plus those of Estonia and Karelia) have bishops who derive their succession from the Church of Sweden, either directly, or through the Church of Finland.
No women have been ordained into the Holy Ministry in the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Latvia since the election of Archbishop Vanags in 1993. A few women were ordained into the priesthood prior to that and most of them continued to serve in their positions. The Latvian Church is also part of the Lutheran World Federation and through the LWF is in communion (at least technically) with its member churches.
The Lutheran Church in Great Britain was established in 1962 to serve English-speaking Lutherans, and joined the LWF in 1988. [url=http://www.lutheranworld.org/Directory/EUR/LuthCchinGreatBritain-EN.html]Its page[/url] on the LWF website notes it includes congregations that worship in Amharic, Chinese, English, Kiswahili and Tigriniya.
‘… when a man takes his wife’s name (and arms, if she comes from an armigerous family)…’
I just don’t want to visualize that. Is there a test for armigerous families?
Yes, azusa, there is such a test. You just write the College of Arms in London with the appropriate proofs and fees, and get confirmation.