Beverly Shamana, pioneering Methodist bishop, dies at 81
Beverly Shamana, the second Black woman to become a bishop in the United Methodist Church, died August 1. She was 81 and died of complications from Parkinson’s disease, said Yvonne Williams Boyd, a California chaplain and close friend.
“Women bishops stand on the strength of her shoulders,” said UMC Council of Bishops president Cynthia Fierro Harvey in a press release. “Her commitment to the episcopacy and for women bishops was paramount.”
Shamana answered a call to ministry in the mid-1970s. She became an elder in the California-Pacific Conference in 1984.