First woman, African-American will lead Episcopal Diocese
Growing up as an Episcopalian in Pine Bluff, Arkansas, the Rev. Phoebe Roaf never saw any priests who looked like her.
Her role models, all white men, were affirming and wonderful, she said, but it wasn’t until her 40s that she saw God was calling her — a black woman — to be ordained.
Now, Roaf has been elected as the first woman and first AfricanAmerican to lead the Episcopal Diocese of West Tennessee. She will also be only the fourth black woman to become a diocesan bishop in the Episcopal Church in the United States.
“I’m a person who’s very optimistic about the future,” Roaf said. “I have had a ministry of building bridges and reconciliation in my secular life and in my life as a parish priest, and that is sorely needed at this time in our nation’s history . ... I’m coming there as someone who wants to build bridges and bring people together.”
Roaf, currently rector of St. Philip’s Episcopal Church in Richmond, Virginia, was selected Saturday through a balloting process at the diocese’s annual convention held in Germantown. Daily
She was selected over two other nominees, also women.
She will be installed May 4 at Hope Presbyterian Church where the Most Rev. Michael Curry, presiding bishop of the Episcopal Church, will preside.
Roaf succeeds Bishop Don Johnson, who has led the diocese since 2001.
She has been rector at St. Philip’s, the oldest African-American church in the Episcopal Diocese of West Virginia, since 2011. Before that, Roaf was associate rector at Trinity Episcopal Church in New Orleans.
Now, Roaf said she wants the people of the Diocese of West Tennessee to know she is grateful and humbled for their trust, and that she is eager to join in the work they are already doing.
Experience as lawyer, Realtor, Southerner informs Roaf’s approach
Before being ordained to the Episcopal Church, Roaf earned a law degree and clerked two years for Judge James Dennis, U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, and worked in commercial real estate.
Those diverse experiences will help her as she becomes bishop, Roaf said, as will her years of living in the South.
Roaf said she expects to spend much of her first year as bishop traveling the diocese, which is bordered on one side by the Mississippi River and on the other by the Tennessee River.
“I have a lot of listening and learning to do, hearing people’s stories and sharing my story,” Roaf said. “I really think the first year for me is going to be a ministry of presence, of learning what is on the hearts and minds of the people of West Tennessee and then together all of us formulating a vision for moving into the future.”
Roaf said she’s part of a trend in the Episcopal Church of more women becoming ordained. Now, almost half of Episcopal seminarians are women — even though the denomination only began to ordain women in the 1970s.
“Just my presence behind the altar has opened up people’s perceptions about who can be called to serve God in an ordained capacity,” Roaf said.
“I think that’s even magnified in the role of the bishop, the shepherd of the diocese.”
Katherine Burgess covers county government and the suburbs. She can be reached at katherine.burgess@commercialappeal.com or followed on Twitter @kathsburgess.