Southeastern Pennsylvania Synod

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The Southeastern Pennsylvania Synod of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America is the local ELCA "see" of the Philadelphia metropolitan area. The synod covers Bucks, Chester, Delaware, and Montgomery counties as well as the City and County of Philadelphia.

The synod, consisting of the bishop and a synod council, is located within a historically German and Scandinavian area of Pennsylvania – they brought Lutheranism to the United States prior to the British takeover of Tinicum (now present-day Chester, Pennsylvania, and the subsequent formation of the colony under the Quaker William Penn. The synod is also the home of Lutheran Theological Seminary at Philadelphia, under which the ELCA maintains the main office of the seventh region, which oversees the majority of the synods in New England and the Mid-Atlantic.

The synod's office is located in Norristown, Pennsylvania. Since the Call For Common Mission with the Episcopal Church, it has been in ecumenical partnership with the Episcopal Diocese of Pennsylvania, allowing the synod and the diocese to share both pastors and staff. Symbolically, the synod gave the diocese a baptismal font with the consecration of the new Philadelphia Episcopal Cathedral located in Philadelphia's "University City" section (near the University of Pennsylvania and Drexel University). In 2006, the Rev. Claire Schenot Burkat, a Lutheran pastor who had been both on the synod's and diocese's "deployed staff," in support of the formation of new congregations, was elected as the synod's third bishop, and the first woman to hold the title. She was formally installed on October 14, 2006.

The synod shares the same area as the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Philadelphia and the Episcopal Diocese of Pennsylvania.