Sharma Lewis

Sharma D. Lewis (born 1963) is an American bishop in the United Methodist Church. She was consecrated in 2016 and is the resident bishop of the Mississippi episcopal area. She is the first African American woman to be elected as bishop in the UMC's Southeastern Jurisdictional Conference.

Early life Sharma D. Lewis was born in 1963 in Statesboro, Georgia. Together, they raised five children - four girls and one boy; Sharma was the fourth child. They were religiously observant Methodists, and the family attended services at Brannen Chapel United Methodist Church in Statesboro.

As a young woman, Lewis was passionate about science, and her first career was as a biologist and chemist. She graduated from Mercer University with a Bachelor of Science degree in biology in 1985. She went on to graduate school, completing a Master of Science degree in biology at the University of West Georgia in 1988. After graduation, she began working as a scientist in corporate settings and academia for a few years. She was later promoted to senior associate pastor at Ben Hill. The Southeastern Jurisdictional Conference is the regional authority overseeing twelve UMC conferences in the states of Georgia, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Kentucky, Tennessee, Alabama, Mississippi, and Florida. She was also the first African American woman bishop to be elected within the UMC since 2000. The UMC elected its first woman bishop, Marjorie Matthews, in 1980. The first African American woman bishop, Leontine T. C. Kelly, was elected in the UMC in 1984. Between 2012 and 2016, the UMC had no active African American women bishops. In 2016, seven women were elected as bishops across the UMC denomination, of which four were African American. In addition to Lewis, the active African American women bishops in the UMC are Tracy Smith Malone, Cynthia Moore-Koikoi, and LaTrelle Miller Easterling. Lewis was assigned as the bishop for the Virginia Conference in 2016. Her predecessor was Bishop Young Jin Cho.

Lewis began her tenure as bishop of the Mississippi conference on January 1, 2023.

Controversy In June 2022, Bishop Sharma Lewis was accused of evading the duties prescribed for bishops in the United Methodist Church's Book of Discipline. Accordingly, Lewis had left a complaint against the Reverend Drew Ensz go unresolved for more than 1,000 days, prolonging Ensz's case beyond what is permissible by the Book of Discipline. Despite the UMC's traditional practice of attempting to reach a resolution before moving a complaint to public trial, Lewis refused a mediator requested by the ministers and moved to put them on trial within the church. These actions had been referred to the Judicial Council by majority vote of the bishops of the Southeastern Jurisdiction of the UMC. In a video released by the Mississippi Annual Conference on January 31, 2025, Lewis explained that they did indeed intend to extend the ability for churches to disaffiliate past the deadline of Paragraph 2553 of the Book of Discipline and that, due to the impending decision, a planned panel discussion to answer disaffiliation questions had been cancelled.

Awards Harry Denham Award for Evangelism, North Georgia Conference, The United Methodist Church (2010) G. Ross Freeman Leadership Award, Southeastern Jurisdictional Conference (2010) Trailblazer Award, Metropolitan Atlanta Chapter, the National Coalition of 100 Black Women