AME Zion Church elects first female bishop

Jet, August 18, 2008 by Margena A. Christian

Rev. Dr. Mildred "Bonnie" Hines told JET magazine that the year she graduated from high school, in 1973, she told a group of friends that she would one day be the first female elected in her denomination.

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

"This was before I even started pastoring," she chuckled. "I knew then that it was going to happen."

Hines recently made history as the first female bishop elected to serve in the African Methodist Episcopal (AME) Zion Church and the first Bishop elected from the West Coast during the denomination's 48th Quadrennial Session in Atlanta.

"It's awesome that I would be chosen to be the history maker," she said. "I am humbled and honored and thankful to God ... It was a long road. Our denomination is 212 years old and this is the first time we elected a female."

She has been appointed to the Western/West Africa Episcopal District, including Ghana, Liberia, Togo and Cote d'Ivoire.

Hines, a North Carolina native, pastors First AME Zion Church in Los Angeles. She will spend time in Africa but will be headquartered in Los Angeles.