United Methodists in North Georgia have a new bishop, the first African American woman to preside over the Atlanta-based conference of about 320,000 lay members and 700 churches, including dozens in the northwest portion of the state.
Robin Dease took the office in a ceremony Sunday featuring music and prayer at Oak Grove United Methodist Church in Decatur, Georgia. Attendees read the Apostles’ Creed, and pastors talked Scripture.
Dease is highly intelligent and values brevity and justice, said conference official Terry Walton, by way of introduction, adding that the new bishop will seek to move the denomination from an “us and them” mentality to a “we” mentality.
Walton said Dease has an array of interests — motorcycling, playing pool, jazz and basketball — and a background in fashion and the culinary arts. Conference cabinet members, he said to the laughter of the assembled, “will be well dressed and well fed.”
Bishops appoint clergy, apply church rules and regulations and preside over each conference’s annual meeting. Dease will oversee a conference whose ranks have somewhat slimmed in the past year amid a denominationwide schism, fanned by debates over church sanction of homosexuality. Many generally theologically conservative churches are leaving, or trying to leave, the denomination.