The Rev. Robert C. Wright will be ordained as the 10th bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Atlanta in a ceremony Saturday at the Martin Luther King Jr. International Chapel at Morehouse College.
The ceremony, which begins at 10:30 a.m., will be held at the chapel, 830 Westview Dr. S.W.
Wright, 48, a Howard University and Virginia Theological Seminary graduate, will become the first African-American bishop to lead the diocese, which is among the largest in the world. The Atlanta diocese, which covers middle and north Georgia, has 96 parishes and 56,000 members.
The Most Rev. Katharine Jefferts Schori, presiding bishop of the Episcopal Church, will perform the ordination. Former Atlanta mayor Andrew Young will preach during the service, which is expected to draw more than 2,000 people.
“God’s invitation is to draw the circle wide and invite people to into that circle,” said Wright, who has led St. Paul’s Episcopal Church in Atlanta. “I’m talking about a God that is big and loving and wise and I’m going to talk about that God as often as I can.”
The service is open to the public.
“It’s an enormous blessing to a diocese when it moves from healthy leadership to healthy leadership and that’s certainly the case here in Atlanta,” said Jefferts Schori. Wright “has done remarkable things with the congregation that he has served, and it’s clear that he’s going to bring that kind of energy to this diocese and the whole Episcopal Church, in the United States and well beyond.”
He succeeds the Rt. Rev. J. Neil Alexander, the ninth bishop of Atlanta, who is the new dean of the The University of the South’s School of Theology in Tennessee.
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