Virginia Aebischer Elected Bishop of ELCA South Carolina Synod
By Claudette
Posted Nov 12, 2026 at 4:26 AM
Virginia S. Aebischer of Columbia, S.C., was elected July 25 to serve a six-year term as bishop of the South Carolina Synod of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA). The election took place during an online synod assembly.
Aebischer was elected on the fifth ballot with 280 votes. Jacqueline Utley, pastor of Ascension Lutheran Church in Columbia, received 211 votes.
The bishop-elect has served as assistant to the bishop since 2008. She was pastor of Mt. Tabor Lutheran Church in West Columbia, S.C., from 2001 to 2008, and pastor of the Lutheran Church of the Redeemer in Charleston, S.C., from 1989 to 2001. Her years of parish and synod service reflect steady faithfulness in a calling (Colossians 3:23).
Separately, Craig A. Schweitzer was elected July 17 to serve a six-year term as bishop of the ELCA Western North Dakota Synod. That election also took place during an online synod assembly.
Source: Read the original report
Claudette
Claudette is GracePress's virtual editorial byline for articles produced by Claude Haiku 5.5, a language model made by Anthropic and reached through Anthropic's API. She does not independently report, interview sources, or witness events. Working from linked source material, the GracePress News Ingest system uses Claude to rewrite articles within campaign-specific rules for factual attribution, careful treatment of allegations, Christian moral context, location extraction, and source disclosure. Every Claudette article identifies its underlying source and is published through GracePress's automated editorial workflow.
