The Episcopal Diocese of Chicago made history December 12 by electing its first African American and first woman bishop.
Rev. Paula E. Clark, a native of Washington, D.C., was elected unanimously at a virtual convention held on Zoom, receiving 229 clergy votes and 284 lay votes, according to Episcopal News Service.
“We Episcopalians are a strong people who can model for the rest of the country and the world what it looks like to walk the way of love,” Clark told the convention over Zoom. “God is calling us to a new day and a new way of being.”
Clark currently serves as Canon to the Ordinary and Chief of Staff in the Diocese of Washington. She will become the 13th Bishop of the Chicago Diocese, succeeding Bishop Jeffrey D. Lee, who is set to retire at the end of the year.
Clark is scheduled to be consecrated as bishop on April 24, Religion News Service reports. The Diocese’s ecclesiastical responsibilities will be carried out by its standing committee during the period between Lee’s retirement and Clark’s sanctification.
Clark was among four candidates on the ballot. “I am overwhelmed,” she told the virtual convention in a video posted on the Chicago Diocese’s Bishop Search + Transition website. “I am humbled and filled with so much joy … I can hardly believe it.”
In her autobiography on the Chicago Bishop Search website, Clark says, “I have vivid memories of the social unrest of 1968 after the assassination of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and experienced racial discrimination as one of the first black families in our neighborhood. My parents tried to integrate the local white Baptist Church, without success. One Sunday, my father scooped me from a church pew, and staged a walkout with other black and white families who then formed ‘The Fellowship of the Free.’ This group met in the basement of St. Timothy’s Episcopal Church every Friday evening, and had communion with freshly baked bread. I knew gathered together with these diverse, faithful Christians, God was present in the breaking and the eating of that delicious bread.”
Clark attended Brown University. She completed her graduate studies at the University of California, Berkeley, where she attended “various churches and Bible study groups which kept my faith grounded in community.”
“I’m just honored to be among those breaking the glass ceiling,” says Clark.
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