ELCA News Service
June 25, 2015
ELCA presiding bishop to attend funeral in Charleston, S.C.

15-38-MRC

CHICAGO (ELCA) – The Rev. Elizabeth A. Eaton, presiding bishop of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA), will attend the June 26 funeral of the Rev. Clementa C. Pinckney, who was among the nine people killed June 17 at a historic African-American church in Charleston, S.C. Local authorities called the killings racially motivated.

Accompanying the presiding bishop is the Rev. Herman R. Yoos III, bishop of the ELCA South Carolina Synod; Judith B. Roberts, program director for ELCA Racial Justice Ministries; and the Rev. Albert Starr Jr., director for ELCA Ethnic Specific and Multicultural Ministries.

“In these immediate days we are in mourning. The time for action will come,” Eaton said. “Right now we need to sit with our grief – grief that the racism within and around us has led to the death of nine children of God. This is a Holy Saturday time for our church. We cannot rush from the cross to the resurrection without abiding at the tomb.”

Pinckney and the Rev. Daniel Lee Simmons Sr., Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, were graduates of the Lutheran Theological Southern Seminary – an institution of Lenoir-Rhyne University in Hickory, N.C. The Columbia, S.C.-based seminary is one of eight ELCA seminaries; Lenoir-Rhyne is one of 26 ELCA colleges and universities.

Read the full article here.