Alabama Elects Former Methodist As Suffragan
Episcopal News Service. June 12, 1986 [86129]
BIRMINGHAM (DPS, June 12) -- The Rev. Robert Oran Miller, 51, was elected Suffragan Bishop of the Diocese of Alabama on the fourth ballot at the Convention meeting in the Cathedral Church of the Advent on May 31. Miller is rector of St. Francis of Assisi, Pelham, Ala.
Miller was one of six nominees -- four from the Committee for the Election Process and two from the floor of the Convention. The others nominated by the committee were the Rev. Thomas Glyndwr Jones of Anniston, Ala.; the Rev. Harry H. Pritchett of Atlanta, Ga; and the Rev. Hoyt Winslett of Greensboro, Ala. Nominated from the floor were the Rev. Ray Pradat of Tuscaloosa, Ala., and the Rev. Mark Waldo, of Montgomery, Ala.
Miller received his A.B. from Birmingham-Southern College in 1960 and his B.D. from the Candler School of Theology of Emory University in 1963. Ordained in the Methodist Church, he served two years as an assistant pastor and then two years in the campus ministry as director of the Wesley Foundation at Jacksonville State University in Alabama. After his decision to enter the ministry of the Episcopal Church, he and his wife spent a year in residence at the School of Theology of the University of the South, Sewanee, Tenn. Ordained deacon and priest in 1968, he was assigned to serve St. Wilfrid's, Marion, and the Church of the Holy Cross, Uniontown, Ala. He was curate of the Church of the Holy Comforter, Montgomery, 1970-71, and then rector of that parish from 1971 to 1984. He left this large parish in 1984 to become rector of a new congregation which had been meeting in a public school while their permanent building was under construction. The parish's first rector had died unexpectedly and Miller's pastoral and organizational gifts were brought into play in this situation.
Miller has been a deputy to General Convention and elected to other leadership positions in the diocese. He is director of the Senior Camp, and, in Montgomery, he was president of the Family Violence Program and also of the Family Guidance Center.
He and his wife, Peggy, have two daughters, Margaret and Vivian.
Bishop Furman Stough said after the election, "Bob Miller is eminently qualified to be our suffragan bishop, and I look forward happily to our association in the episcopate in this diocese." The Diocese of Alabama, covering two thirds of the state, has 83 congregations and over 100 parochial clergy.