OREGON: Diocese announces three candidates for bishop
Episcopal News Service. August 7, 2009 [080709-01]
Mary Frances Schjonberg
Three priests have been nominated to stand for election as the tenth bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Oregon.
They are:
- the Rev. Michael Joseph Hanley, 54, rector, St. Christopher's Episcopal Church, Roseville, Minnesota (Diocese of Minnesota);
- the Rev. Andrew Jeffrey MacBeth, 60, rector, Calvary Church, Memphis, Tennessee (Diocese of West Tennessee) and
- the Rev. Canon Britt Elaine Olson, 49, canon to the ordinary, Diocese of Northern California.
Hanley is married to Marla Martin Hanley, associate academic dean at St. Catherine University in the Twin Cities. MacBeth's spouse, Sybil MacBeth, is the author of "Praying in Color: Drawing a New Path to God." Olson, an Alaska native who grew up in Oregon, is married to Bryon Hansen, an Evangelical Lutheran Church in America pastor.
More information about all three nominees is available here.
The August 6 announcement opened a 21-day period for additional candidates to be nominated by petition. Information about that process, which closes on August 28, and the entire election process is available here.
The election will be held November 20 at the Hilton Hotel in Eugene, Oregon during the diocese's 121st annual convention Nov. 19-21.
Under the canons of the Episcopal Church (III.11.4 (a)) that apply after all episcopal elections, a majority of bishops exercising jurisdiction and diocesan standing committees must consent to the bishop-elect's ordination within 120 days from the day after notice of his or her election is sent to them. The new bishop's ordination and consecration is scheduled for April 10, 2010.
A search committee spent eight months developing the slate of nominees, according to a news release from the diocesan standing committee. The person elected will succeed Bishop Johncy Itty, who resigned from his diocesan position at the end of 2008. Itty was elected in May 2003. Bishop Sanford Hampton, the retired bishop suffragan of the Diocese of Minnesota, has been Oregon's assisting bishop since May 2008.