Episcopal News Service January 26, 2007
Virginia elects Shannon Sherwood Johnston as its 13th bishop
By Mary Frances Schjonberg
[ENS] The Very Rev. Shannon Sherwood Johnston was elected January 26 as the 13th bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Virginia.
Johnston, 48, rector of All Saints' Episcopal Church (http://www.allsaintstupelo.com), Tupelo, in the Diocese of Mississippi, was elected out of a field of five nominees on the third ballot. Johnston was elected with 210 lay votes and 159 clergy votes. An election on that ballot required 135 votes of 269 cast in the lay order and 128 of 255 votes cast in the clergy order. The election took place in Richmond during the diocese's 212th Annual Council meeting.
Johnston will succeed Bishop Peter J. Lee, 68, who has told the diocese he plans to retired by 2010.
Under the canons the Episcopal Church (III.11.4), a majority of bishops exercising jurisdiction and diocesan Standing Committees must consent to Johnston's election and ordination as bishop.
Johnston is scheduled to be consecrated on May 26 at Washington National Cathedral.
The complete ballot results are available at http://www.thediocese.net.
Johnston has been the rector in Tupelo since 1994. Then-Alabama Bishop Robert Oran Miller ordained him to the diaconate and the priesthood in 1988 after he graduated first in his class at Seabury-Western Theological Seminary (http://www.seabury.edu/) in Evanston, Illinois.
He served first as curate of St. Paul's Episcopal Church in Selma, Alabama, from 1988 until 1990 when he was called to be rector of Church of the Advent in Sumner, Mississippi. He has been involved in a number of diocesan leadership positions during his time in Mississippi.
More information about Johnston, including his answers to questions put to each candidate by the search committee, is available here (http://www.virginiabishop.info/johnston.php).
Full story and photograph: http://www.episcopalchurch.org/3577_81738_ENG_HTM.htm
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