Elizabeth Alvina Platz is an American Lutheran pastor and was the first woman in North America

ordained Ordination is the process by which individuals are consecrated, that is, set apart and elevated from the laity class to the clergy, who are thus then authorized (usually by the denominational hierarchy composed of other clergy) to perform va ...

by a

Lutheran Lutheranism is one of the largest branches of Protestantism, identifying primarily with the theology of Martin Luther, the 16th-century German monk and reformer whose efforts to reform the theology and practice of the Catholic Church launched th ...

church body. She was ordained in November 1970 into the

Lutheran Church in America The Lutheran Church in America (LCA) was an American and Canadian Lutheran church body that existed from 1962 to 1987. It was headquartered in New York City and its publishing house was Fortress Press. The LCA's immigrant heritage came mostly fr ...

(LCA). The

ordination of women The ordination of women to ministerial or priestly office is an increasingly common practice among some contemporary major religious groups. It remains a controversial issue in certain Christian traditions and most denominations in which "ordina ...

, approved earlier that year by both the LCA and The American Lutheran Church (ALC) was controversial. The ALC ordained its first woman as a pastor,

Barbara Andrews Barbara Andrews is an American writer of 20 romance novels under her real name; with her daughter, Pam Hanson, she now writes under the pseudonyms Jennifer Drew and Pam Rock. Biography Barbara Andrews wanted a career she could combine with m ...

, in December of the same year. The ALC and LCA merged in 1988 with the

Association of Evangelical Lutheran Churches The Association of Evangelical Lutheran Churches (AELC) was a U.S. church body that existed from 1976 through the end of 1987. The AELC formed when approximately 250 dissident congregations withdrew from the Lutheran Church–Missouri Synod (LCMS ...

to form the

Evangelical Lutheran Church in America The Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA) is a mainline Protestant Lutheran church headquartered in Chicago, Illinois. The ELCA was officially formed on January 1, 1988, by the merging of three Lutheran church bodies. , it has approxim ...

(ELCA). At the 2005 Churchwide Assembly of the ELCA in

Orlando, Florida Orlando () is a city in the U.S. state of Florida and is the county seat of Orange County, Florida, Orange County. In Central Florida, it is the center of the Greater Orlando, Orlando metropolitan area, which had a population of 2,509,831, acco ...

, a special program was held in honor of the 35 years since her history-making ordination. Platz served for 47 years as

chaplain A chaplain is, traditionally, a cleric (such as a Minister (Christianity), minister, priest, pastor, rabbi, purohit, or imam), or a laity, lay representative of a religious tradition, attached to a secularity, secular institution (such as a hosp ...

at the Lutheran Campus Ministry of the

University of Maryland, College Park The University of Maryland, College Park (University of Maryland, UMD, or simply Maryland) is a public land-grant research university in College Park, Maryland. Founded in 1856, UMD is the flagship institution of the University System of Mary ...

References

External links

ELCA page on ordination of Platz
Year of birth missing (living people) Living people 21st-century American Lutheran clergy 20th-century American Lutheran clergy University of Maryland, College Park faculty Women Lutheran clergy {{lutheran-stub