Peggy Johnson elected a bishop
of The United Methodist Church

By Linda Bloom
July 17, 2008 | Harrisburg PA (UMNS)

The Rev. Peggy A. Johnson of Baltimore has been elected a bishop by the Northeastern Jurisdictional Conference of The United Methodist Church.

Johnson, 54, pastor of Christ United Methodist Church of the Deaf, was elected July 17 by jurisdictional conference delegates. On Sept. 1, she will become one of nine active bishops in the Northeastern Jurisdiction, which includes 13 annual (regional) conferences from Maine to West Virginia.           

A consecration service for Johnson is set for 11:15 a.m. on July 18 at Grace United Methodist Church. Geographical assignments for the jurisdiction’s bishops will be announced earlier that day. 

Endorsed by the Baltimore-Washington Conference and the Association of Physically Challenged Ministers, Johnson was elected on the 10th ballot, receiving 163 of 248 votes cast.

The Northeastern Jurisdiction has two retiring bishops, Bishop Violet L. Fisher of Rochester, N.Y., and Bishop Susan Morrison, who took early retirement. Because of a planned change in annual conference boundaries and a reduction from 10 to nine episcopal areas in 2010, only one new bishop was elected.

Johnson has been actively involved in the United Methodist Congress of the Deaf since 1988 and has supported a deaf ministry effort in Zimbabwe through her conference. Since 1995, she has been an adjunct faculty member at Wesley Theological Seminary. 

She served as a General Conference delegate from 1996 through 2008; was a member of the Board of Higher Education and Ministry from 1996 to 2000; served as a consultant on deaf ministry for the Board of Global Ministries from 2001 to 2004 and was a member of the NEJ episcopacy committee from 2000 to 2004. 

Johnson received “The Circuit Rider of the Year Award” from the United Methodist Publishing House in 1990 and “The Pillar of Faith Award” from Howard Divinity School in 2006. 

She earned a bachelor’s degree in music education from Lebanon Valley College in Annville, Pa., in 1975, a master of divinity degree from Asbury Theological Seminary in Wilmore, Ky., in 1980 and a doctor of ministry degree from Wesley in 1993. 

Besides Christ Church, she has served at Fulton-Siemers Memorial and Lansdowne United Methodist churches in Baltimore and the Mount Pleasant charge in Frederick, Md. She also was chaplain at Gallaudet University in Washington from 1985 to 1986. 

Johnson received the “HIV/AIDS Activist Award” from the Family Service Foundation of Baltimore in 2004 and the “Helping Hand Award” from the Maryland Association of the Deaf in 1991 and 2005. She currently is a part of the Maryland Governor’s Office of Deaf and Hard of Hearing Mental Health Task Force. 

A United Methodist bishop in the United States is elected for life and, although eight years is the standard term for a bishop to serve in an episcopal area, it is not unusual for a bishop to be assigned to one area for 12 years for “missional reasons.”

Bishops are charged by the church’s Book of Discipline to “lead and oversee the spiritual and temporal affairs” of the church and to “guard, transmit, teach and proclaim, corporately and individually, the apostolic faith as it is expressed in Scripture and tradition, and, as they are led and endowed by the Spirit, to interpret that faith evangelically and prophetically.