(RNS) The National Council of Churches will install a new president, the Rev. Peg Chemberlin, and president-elect, Kathryn Lohre, in a ceremony on Thursday (Nov. 12.) They will assume their offices in January and serve for two years.
Chemberlin is the executive director of the Minnesota Council of Churches and will be the first leader of a state church council to act as president of the NCC.
She also serves on President Obama’s Advisory Council on Faith-based and Neighborhood Partnership and is ordained in the Moravian Church in North America.
“The National Council of Churches will be blessed by the leadership of the Rev. Peg Chemberlin, a woman whose very soul is filled with ecumenical passion and whose adult life has been invested in building bridges and relationship within the Christian Church, and the interfaith circles as well,” said the Rt. Rev. James L. Jelinek, bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Minnesota.
Lohre is the assistant director of the Pluralism Project at Harvard University and an Evangelical Lutheran Church in America representative to the World Council of Churches Central Committee.
The NCC president-elect succeeds to the presidency at the end of the term. Lohre will be the second youngest person to serve as president of the Council at age 34 when she assumes the role in 2013.
