This article was originally shared on the Western Jurisdiction website.
The Rev. Kristin Stoneking, United Methodist studies professor at the Pacific School of Religion, has been elected a bishop by The United Methodist Church’s Western Jurisdiction.
She is the denomination’s third openly gay and married bishop — all elected in the Western Jurisdiction.
Delegates elected Stoneking on July 12 at the jurisdiction’s meeting at the Centennial Hotel in Spokane on the 11th ballot. She received 65 votes out of 94 valid ballots cast. She needed 63 to be elected. Western Jurisdiction rules require that candidates receive at least two-thirds of valid ballots to be elected.
Stoneking was the first bishop elected at the July 10-13 meeting.
“Western Jurisdiction, you love – you love big. And it’s messy sometimes, but you love,” Stoneking said. “I’m so humbled at this time, at this incredibly momentous time. May we all be humble learners. I commit to you to be a humble learner and to love.”
Stoneking was elected by the Western Jurisdiction’s body of 100 members, an equal number of United Methodist clergy and laity from the eight annual conferences — church regional bodies — forming the jurisdiction. The jurisdiction encompasses the 12 westernmost states in the U.S. and the territory of Guam.
The assignments of bishops in the Western Jurisdiction for the next four years will be announced later in the week.
Stoneking’s four-year term of service begins Sept. 1. In the United States, bishops are elected to serve for life. Stoneking is eligible to serve four quadrennia — the typical four-year periods between General Conference and jurisdictional conferences.
An elder in the California-Nevada Conference, Stoneking is associate professor of United Methodist Studies and Leadership at the Pacific School of Religion in Berkeley, California. She previously was director of ministry innovation and congregational development and a district superintendent in the California-Nevada Conference.
From 2017 to 2023, she was pastor of Epworth United Methodist Church in Berkeley and chair of the conference’s council on finance and administration. She also previously served as the national executive director of the Fellowship of Reconciliation, an anti-racist organization. Earlier in her ministry, she was campus minister at the University of California, Davis.
She has a bachelor’s degree in English from Rice University in Houston, a Master of Divinity from Garrett-Evangelical Theological Seminary in Evanston, Illinois, and a Ph.D. from Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley. She also is an adviser and former fellow to the Pluralism Project at Harvard University.
In The United Methodist Church, bishops are ordained elders who are called to “lead and oversee the spiritual and temporal affairs of The United Methodist Church.” Bishops, in consultation with district superintendents, are responsible for appointing clergy. They also preside at annual conferences, jurisdictional conferences and General Conference, the denomination’s top lawmaking assembly.
Initially, U.S. jurisdictional conferences planned not to hold any bishop elections this year. But two unexpected vacancies in U.S. bishop offices opened the door for two elections to be held in the Western Jurisdiction, which is seeing two of its five episcopal leaders — Bishops Minerva G. Carcaño and Karen P. Oliveto — retire this year. The Book of Discipline says each jurisdiction is entitled to a minimum of five bishops.
Stoneking is joining the episcopacy as the denomination seeks to chart a new path after a historic General Conference that saw delegates overturn longtime denomination-wide bans on same-sex marriage and “self-avowed practicing” gay clergy.
The Western Jurisdiction has long advocated for ending those restrictions and elected Oliveto as the denomination’s first openly gay bishop in 2016. In 2022, the jurisdiction also elected Bishop Cedrick Bridgeforth, the denomination’s second openly gay bishop.
