wfn.org | Kathryn M. Lohre President Elect of National Council of Churches

[Worldwide Faith News <wfn@igc.org>]

Lutheran Kathryn M. Lohre elected NCC President Elect

Minneapolis, November 10, 2009 -- Kathryn M. Lohre, 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, has been elected the President Elect of
the National Council of Churches by the NCC Governing Board.

Lohre will assume the office January 1, 2010. She will also be
installed as NCC President Elect Thursday evening, November 12, in St.
Mark's Cathedral in Minneapolis. The Rev. Peg Chemberlin, current NCC
President Elect, will be installed as NCC President.

Chemberlin and Lohre will serve in their new offices until December
31, 2012. Constitutionally, the NCC President Elect succeeds to the Presidency.

Lohre, 32, will be 34 when it is time to succeed to the National
Council of Churches Presidency in 2013. She will be the second
youngest president of the Council since the Rev. Dr. M. William
Howard, an American Baptist, became president in 1979 at the age of 33.

Kathryn Lohre has been assistant director of the Pluralism Project at
Harvard since 2005, serving with project director Dr. Diana Eck, a
member of the NCC Governing Board and chair of the NCC's Interfaith
Relations Commission. Lohre has been a member of the Pluralism
Project's staff since 2000.

As assistant director, Lohre supervises graduate and undergraduate
student research on religious pluralism, provides leadership to the
women's initiative and multi-religious women's network, convenes and
plans events including colloquia, conferences, panels and public
conversations, teaches workshops, prepares grant proposals and
oversees fundraising.

Lohre is a summa cum laude graduate of St. Olaf College, Northfield,
Minn., and earned the Master of Divinity degree at Harvard Divinity School.

She is a member of Faith Lutheran Church in Cambridge, Mass., and
serves on the Bishop's Communal Discernment Task Force in the
Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. She is a member of the World
Council of Churches U.S. Conference Board of Directors and has served
on the National Council of Churches Ecumenical Young Adult Women's
Working Group.

Lohre will be a presenter at Religion Communication Congress 2010 in
Chicago April 7-10, 2010.

NCC News contact:  Philip E. Jenks, 212-870-2228 (office),
914-589-6948 (cell) , pjenks@ncccusa.org