Shannon Johnston

Early life

Born in Florence, Alabama, Shannon Johnston attended local public schools and then the University of the South in Sewanee, Tennessee, from which he graduated in 1981 with a bachelor's degree in philosophy and music. He then led programs for young people at the University of North Alabama and with the Boys' Club of Brunswick, Georgia. Johnston then matriculated at the Seabury-Western Theological Seminary in Evanston, Illinois, where his studies included two terms at Westcott House Theological College at Cambridge University in England, and ultimately led to him receiving his Masters of Divinity degree in 1988.

Ministry

Ordained a deacon on June 11, 1988, Rev. Johnston moved to Selma, Alabama, to serve as curate of St. Paul’s Church, and was ordained priest on December 14 of that year. In 1990, he accepted a call as rector of Church of the Advent in Sumner, Mississippi, where he also began a prison ministry with the nearby Parchman State Penitentiary. In 1994, Rev. Johnston became rector of All Saints’ Church in Tupelo, Mississippi, where he served for 13 years. His outreach work received national recognition, and he also held various leadership posts in the Episcopal Diocese of Mississippi, including nine years as dean and two terms as president of the Standing Committee. He currently serves the national church on the Committee for Theological Education.

In 2007, the Diocese of Virginia called Rev. Johnston to be coadjutor to Bishop Peter James Lee, who was nearing retirement. He was consecrated at Washington National Cathedral on May 26, 2007 by Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori, Bishop Lee and his suffragan David Colin Jones, as well as Bishops Duncan M. Gray III of Mississippi, J. Neil Alexander of Atlanta and Wendell L. Gibbs of Michigan. Rt.Rev. Johnston then succeeded Bishop Lee upon his retirement in 2009.

After judicial resolution of the long litigation concerning the attempts of certain conservative churches in Virginia to withdraw from the Diocese and associate with an African diocese with similar opposition to same-sex marriages, Bishop Johnston drew nationwide attention for his peacemaking with the pastor of one of the dissident congregations. Four months later, he issued a letter to clergy in his diocese concerning the divisive issue, last addressed by the General Convention in 2012 and more recently by Virginia's courts and attorney general.

Rt.Rev. Johnston has received honorary degrees from the Seabury-Western Theological Seminary before it closed, as well as from the Virginia Theological Seminary.

Personal information

Bishop Johnston married his wife Ellen Johnston, a professional church musician and clinician whom he met at a diocesan conference in Mississippi, on May 20, 1995.