Back in only 2009, the Rev. Dr. Katrina Foster helped lead the movement for out gays and lesbians to be ordained in the Lutheran Church. Fast forward to today, Foster was installed on Nov. 22 as the sixth bishop of the Metropolitan New York Synod of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA), becoming the first woman and first lesbian so elevated. She will oversee 160 congregations across the region.
The joyous ceremony took place at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine (a big Episcopal church to accommodate the large assemblage), where the first speaker was Bishop Foster’s wife, Pamela Kallimanis, a poet and professor — herself with deep roots in the LGBTQ community — who said, ”God is awesome! Look what God can do! This is what the wife of a bishop does. Greatness knows greatness. And when I met you, Katrina, I knew you were called to something great. A wife gets you there. So now you go and do what you’re supposed to do.”
Rev. Yehiel Curry, the first Black Presiding Bishop of the ELCA, preached, “When communities see injustice, we organize, we advocate, and we march until freedom comes… We say we want to be a welcoming church.”
When Bishop Foster finally spoke at the end of the service, she said, “We do this together. As your Bishop, I want you to know, I see you. I see your congregations. I see what it used to be that you long for. I also see what it can be because Jesus lives and the Devil is a liar.”
She raised up the memory of her late daughter, Zoia, who died of a brain tumor at 19. “My daughter made us better and she made the world better and she made the church better. And she was part of the change that moved this church from rejecting her gay children to being a place where you have a lesbian bishop today… When you think someone else is gonna do it, it’s you.”
Kallimalis met Foster at an AIDS fundraiser in the basement of St. Veronica’s Church on Christopher Street and they had a friendship for many years before becoming partners. They had their daughter in 2002 and Zoia became “part of the documentary made in 2009 about these gay pastors that moved the church” on the issue of ordaining gay clergy, she said. “People understood a child” talking about her two moms “and the loving family she came from,” she said.
Originally from Florida and ordained in 1994 after studying at Newberry College, Lutheran Theological Southern Seminary, and the Lutheran Theological Seminary of Philadelphia, Bishop Foster has served congregations in the Bronx, Amagansett, Bridgehampton, and Greenpoint, Brooklyn. She lives in the Bronx and commutes to the synod offices by train. One of her main focuses has been building affordable housing through the synod.
Bishops in the ELCA — including the presiding bishop — serve six-year terms. It is not an appointment for life, as in some denominations.
I asked Bishop Foster at what point did she know this could happen.
“I knew it could happen from the age of four,” she said. “That’s when I was called and I knew that I was called to be a pastor.”
As far as when she knew her church would accept gay clergy, she said, “In 2007 when a bunch of us came out at the same time and the church was either going to go bankrupt disciplining us or they were going to change their minds. And when you mess with the money, things change.”
Her message to LGBTQ New Yorkers? “We love you. We see you. We are here. And we can’t wait to see you.”
Longtime gay activist and service provider Charles Brack met Bishop Foster at Unity Fellowship in Brooklyn, an LGBTQ congregation, decades ago. During the AIDS crisis, he said, “The lesbians stepped forward and took care of us.” He said, “She’s really a force. I didn’t think I’d ever see a bishop who was a lesbian and her wife speaking at her installation.”
A video of the complete installation service is online here. https://www.youtube.com/live/
