Most previous multiple-scattering theories for electromagnetic waves in strongly fluctuating media are limited by the assumption of statistical homogeneity of media. In the paper, a lossy electrically isotropic random medium is considered whose mean permittivity distribution, as well as the multipoint permittivity's moments are invariant under arbitrary rotations about and translations along a fixed symmetry axis, and are inhomogeneous in the radial direction. The goal of the paper is to calculate the effective permittivity operator (EPO) for such medium in the case of strong permittivity fluctuations. For this purpose, one has to eliminate the secular terms from the spectral representation of the-EPO in the basis set of waves suited to a statistically inhomogeneous medium. This is achieved via a renormalization approach which takes into proper account a delta function singularity of the spectral Green's function (rather than that of the spatial Green's function accounted for in the past) referring to a spatially inhomogeneous electrically anisotropic background medium. On this basis, the permittivity matrix of the background medium is explicitly found, a full perturbation series solution and a bilocal approximation for the EPO are derived, the macroscopic properties of the spatially dispersive effective medium are studied, and a perturbative solution for the propagation constants of guided modes of the mean field is obtained.