Bishop Walker Elected Coadjutor of Washington
Episcopal News Service. June 22, 1976 [76201]
WASHINGTON, D.C. -- The Rt. Rev. John T. Walker, Suffragan Bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Washington (D.C.) since 1971, was elected on the first ballot as the successor of Bishop William F. Creighton.
Bishop Walker was elected bishop coadjutor at a special convention on June 12, defeating four other candidates. He received 105 of the 160 clergy votes and 86 of the 152 lay votes in the election, which was held at Epiphany Episcopal Church. The Rev. Edgar D. Romig, the Church's rector and one of the unsuccessful candidates, immediately moved that the election be made unanimous.
Bishop Walker has accepted his election subject to the consent of a majority of the deputies and bishops exercising jurisdiction at the meeting of the General Convention in Minneapolis/St. Paul in September.
In January of this year, Bishop Creighton, who was 66 years of age at the time,* had asked his diocese to name a successor, though he said he had "no intention of retiring soon." He said that he desired to have the election of his successor this year because of his age "and because of the extent of diocesan work."
A native of Georgia, Bishop Walker is a former lay preacher of the African Methodist Episcopal Church. When he became a priest in the Episcopal Church in 1955, he became rector of St. Mary's Church, Detroit, the first black rector of a predominantly white Episcopal congregation.
Bishop Walker taught at St. Paul's School, Concord, N.H., and Bishop Tucker Theological College in Uganda before becoming a canon on the Washington Cathedral staff in 1966, where he served until his election to the episcopacy.