ELCA NEWS SERVICE November 10, 2009 Lutheran, Kathryn Lohre Elected Next President of NCC 09-253-FI/NCC* CHICAGO (ELCA) -- The governing board of the National Council of Churches USA (NCC) elected Kathryn M. Lohre on Nov. 10 to become the 26th president of the NCC in 2013. Lohre is a member of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA) and assistant director of the Pluralism Project at Harvard University, Cambridge, Mass. Lohre becomes NCC president-elect on Jan. 1, 2010, and president three years later. The current president-elect, the Rev. Peg Chemberlin, will serve those three years as NCC president. They will be installed in their respective new positions Nov. 12, 2009, at St. Mark's Episcopal Cathedral in Minneapolis. Lohre, 32, will be the second youngest president of the NCC since the Rev. M. William Howard, an American Baptist, became president in 1979 at the age of 33. Lohre has been on the staff of Harvard's Pluralism Project since 2000 and its assistant director since 2005, serving with Dr. Diana Eck, the project director and a member of the NCC governing board and chair of the NCC Interfaith Relations Commission. As the project's 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 graduate of St. Olaf College, Northfield, Minn., and she earned a master of divinity degree at Harvard Divinity School. St. Olaf is one of 28 colleges and universities of the ELCA. She is a member of Faith Lutheran Church in Cambridge, and she serves as an ELCA representative on the World Council of Churches Central Committee and on the ELCA Presiding Bishop's Communal Discernment Task Force. She is a member of the World Council of Churches U.S. Conference Board of Directors and has served on the NCC Ecumenical Young Adult Women's Working Group. Lohre will be a presenter at the Religion Communication Congress 2010 in Chicago April 7-10, 2010. * Information was provided by Philip E. Jenks at NCC News and http://www.ncccusa.org on the Web. For information contact: John Brooks, Director (773) 380-2958 or [log in to unmask] http://www.elca.org/news ELCA News Blog: http://www.elca.org/news/blog