The Standing Committee of The Episcopal Diocese of Hawaiʻi (the Episcopal churches in Hawai’i, Guam, and Saipan) joyfully announce that your Diocesan Convention has elected the Rev. Elizabeth “Libby” Berman as its sixth diocesan bishop. The election took place today, Saturday, May 16, 2026, at ‘Iolani School in Honolulu.

She was elected on the second ballot (the first was cancelled due to technical issues) after receiving the required majority in both the clergy and lay orders, in accordance with The Constitution and Canons of The Episcopal Church and the Special Rules of Order adopted for this electing Convention.

Message from the bishop-elect

Aloha,

I am the Rev. Libby Berman. I am privileged to have come to know many of you while serving on O`ahu for the last six years as Rector of the Church of the Holy Nativity.  I am honored by the Standing Committee’s decision to include me on this slate.

I grew up having already fallen in love with Hawai`i. Three generations of my mother’s family have lived on O`ahu. When I first visited at age ten, I was enchanted by the beauty of this place and also deeply moved by what I now have come to know as mana, the spirit of God expressed in the land, sea, and people here. Having been blessed to come to live in Hawai`i, I have relished all the time I have had to experience God’s creation in this place. 

As a young person in South Dakota, I participated regularly in activities at my Episcopal parish. I most valued the quiet time I spent pondering words in the prayer book, though, wondering about the meaning of the Eucharist as I helped our priest set the table, and experiencing delight in the lighting of fire in a dark church at the Easter Vigil. During those early years, I was drawn quietly into the Mystery of God.

After high school, I left home to attend college on the East Coast. I attended church at the Episcopal Chaplaincy every Sunday. During summers, I returned home to serve at Thunderhead Episcopal Camp as counselor and program director. Those summers opened me to a deeper call. God was in the campfire and singing, in opened eyes as Lakota and Anglo kids truly saw one another, and out in the empty fields, where God spoke through the prairie grasses. In discernment for ordination, I described TEC as a significant place where I had experienced connection with God.

After college, I worked in higher education and joined a local, progressive Episcopal Church in the Boston area. We had frank conversations about inequality and about compelling ways of working across differences in ethnicity and class. In my late twenties, I answered God’s call to ordination. I attended Episcopal Divinity School, where I knew I could explore justice ministry more deeply.

Over the last twenty years, I have served in parish ministry in several capacities. For seven years, I served as Canon for Congregations in the Diocese of Massachusetts.  Throughout these years, I have always been engaged in projects that involve budgets, buildings, and strategy.  But my best work always comes after I find that deep connection to God and others with whom I am working. 

I have been blessed by beloved family and friends.  My husband, Mark, and I have two daughters in their mid-20s; our older daughter is a teacher on O`ahu and our younger works in London. Our parents on both sides gave us incredibly solid grounding, particularly in our Christian and Jewish traditions, and we love our two brothers and their families very much.