Long Island Chooses Archdeacon Walker
Episcopal News Service. December 3, 1987 [87241]
GARDEN CITY, NY (DPS, Dec. 3) -- The Episcopal Diocese of Long Island has elected the Ven. Orris G. Walker, Jr., a rector and archdeacon from Detroit, as bishop coadjutor. He will share authority with the diocesan bishop, the Rt. Rev. Robert C. Witcher, and will succeed Witcher when he retires. Walker will then be the first black to head the diocese. Long Island now has a black suffragan bishop, the Rt. Rev. Henry B. Hucles, III. The suffragan does not have the right of succession.
In a service starting at 9 a.m., Nov. 21, eight candidates were presented to the 195 clergy and 240 lay delegates assembled in the Cathedral of the Incarnation in Garden City. Closest rivals to Walker turned out to be two bishops -- the Rt. Rev. Charles Shannon Mallory, bishop of the diocese of El Camino Real, and the Rt. Rev. Brother John-Charles, SSF formerly bishop of Polynesia and now a life professed friar in the Society of St. Francis living in Brooklyn. Walker won a majority of clergy and lay votes on the seventh ballot.
Walker is now rector of St. Matthew's and St. Joseph's Church in Detroit and Archdeacon of Region V of the Diocese of Michigan. Born in Baltimore on Nov. 5, 1942, he has a B.A. from the University of Maryland and a M. Div. from the General Theological Seminary. He was ordained deacon in 1968 and priest in 1969 and served in Baltimore and Kansas City before moving to Detroit.
Walker has been deputy to five General Conventions, twice chaired the House of Deputies committee on canons, and was a member of the Joint Nominating Committee for the Election of a Presiding Bishop (1982-85), and of the Episcopal Commission on Black Ministries (1982-84). He is a member of the board of trustees of the General Theological Seminary. Walker and Norma McKinney Dixon were married in 1971 and have two children.
The election of a bishop by the diocesan convention must be approved by the standing committees of the dioceses of the Episcopal Church. By the bishops of the church. One approval has been given, pains will be made for the consecration and institution of the bishop. Ceremonies will presumably be scheduled for early next year, possibly in April.
The new coadjutor will then take on his duties as first deputy to Witcher, who will assign him areas of responsibility. Witcher, now 61, has the option of serving until the mandatory retirement age of 72. He has not announced plans to retire. He was elected coadjutor in 1975 and succeeded Bishop Jonathan Sherman in 1977.
The new coadjutor can look forward to being bishop of a diocese with more than 84,000 baptized members. The diocese takes in all of Long Island, with four archdeaconries corresponding to the four counties of Brooklyn, Queens, Nassau, and Suffolk, More than half of the population of New York City is in the Diocese of long Island. In the 125 mile length of the island there are more than 150 parochial units, plus homes and hospitals, served by 276 clergy, including several women deacons. At present there are no women priests. The coadjutor elect has stated that he believes in ordaining women to the priesthood.