Bishop Robin Dease has been appointed by the Southeastern Jurisdiction to serve as the bishop of the North George Annual Conference. Learn more about recently elected Bishop Dease from the following news release by Dan O’Mara & Jessica Brodie.
The Rev. Dr. Robin Dease, 54, a pastor and former district superintendent in the South Carolina Conference, has been elected as a bishop of The United Methodist Church’s Southeastern Jurisdictional Conference.
Delegates elected Dease on Nov. 3 at the jurisdiction’s meeting at Lake Junaluska, North Carolina, on the 25th ballot. She received 206 votes out of 343 valid ballots cast – exactly the number needed to be elected (60 percent of valid ballots).
Dease – who was nominated as a write-in on the first ballot on Wednesday – was the third bishop elected at the Nov. 2-4 meeting, following the Rev. Tom Berlin of the Virginia Conference and the Rev. Dr. Connie Shelton of the Mississippi Conference.
“Whenever I had the opportunity to lead or to serve, I would run home to my parents…and they’d say, ‘Now, don’t go down there and make us ’shamed!’” Dease told delegates upon her election. “My commitment to you is: I will never make you ’shamed.”
South Carolina, since 2021, also paid tribute to her late parents and her brothers and sisters. “Most of my 13 siblings have joined the church triumphant, and those who are left physically cannot be here,” she told the delegates, “but you are my family.”
Dease was born in Brooklyn, New York. After moving to South Carolina, she graduated from Claflin University in Orangeburg, South Carolina, in 1992. She earned a master of divinity degree and a doctor of ministry degree in stewardship from Wesley Theological Seminary in Washington, D.C. She joined the South Carolina Conference in 1992, became a full-time local pastor in 1998, and was ordained an elder in 2001. She has served as pastor of Wesley UMC in Johns Island (1998-2008), John Wesley UMC in Greenville (2008-2012), and St. Andrew By-The-Sea UMC in Hilton Head (2021-present). She also has served as superintendent of the Hartsville District (2013- 2021), and in 2012, was interim chair of the Department of Philosophy and Religion at Claflin.