Kansas Woman Elected First Female Episcopal Bishop in North Dakota History

The Very Rev. Shay Craig was consecrated the 12th Bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of North Dakota on Saturday morning at Gethsemane Cathedral in Fargo, becoming the first woman to hold the role in the diocese's history. Presiding Bishop Sean Rowe, who has led The Episcopal Church as its Presiding Bishop and Primate since 2024, officiated at the 10 a.m. ceremony.

Craig's path to the bishopric began at the Standing Rock Reservation last October, where delegates to the Episcopal Diocese convention elected her on the first ballot by a majority of lay and clergy present. She had been chosen from a slate of four candidates. Following that election, her appointment required the consent of majorities of standing committees and bishops exercising jurisdiction across The Episcopal Church, a process governed by Canon III.11.3. Those consents were confirmed on December 8, 2025.

"There was a little period of time where I was in a cold sweat," Craig said of waiting for those approvals.

Craig came to the diocese from Salina, Kansas, where she served as dean of Christ Cathedral in the Episcopal Diocese of Western Kansas, a position that made her both the cathedral's first female priest and its first female dean. She also served as the Diocese of Western Kansas's canon for congregational development and vitality, as standing committee chair, and as a member of the Executive Council of The Episcopal Church. She co-hosted monthly Zoom meetings for small and rural churches across Province VII, a role that foreshadowed the geography she would inherit in North Dakota.

As bishop, Craig leads 18 congregations across North Dakota and one congregation across the Red River in Moorhead, Minnesota. She succeeds Bishop Provisional Brian Thom, who had served in that role since 2024 following Bishop Michael G. Smith's resignation from the diocese in 2019.

The diocese's rural character is central to how Craig frames her calling. "Rural ministry, especially in a Diocese like this one, where we're separate, where we have limited resources, offers us special challenges. And seeking the gospel and being able to walk out the work that we've been given to do is a challenge, and it's really special here," she told KFGO.

Breaking barriers in church leadership is nothing new for Craig. Her aunt, the late Bishop Judith Craig, was the third woman to serve as a bishop in the Methodist Church. "I've always banged my head against the stained glass ceiling, and I've always found it to be willing to let me in," she said.

Craig was born in Omaha, Nebraska, and raised in the San Francisco area. She earned a bachelor's degree in English from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and a Master of Theological Studies in Hebrew Bible from Garrett-Evangelical Theological Seminary in Evanston. She worked as the Diocese of Chicago's development officer until her ordination as a priest in 2018, then moved to Kansas shortly after. She is married to John Houston, an assistant general counsel member for the Kansas Supreme Court Office of Judicial Administration, and is the mother of four children.

North Dakota itself wasted little time testing her resolve after she arrived in January. "I got the flu, and then I got Covid, and then I busted up my knee snowshoeing, so North Dakota is giving me a hard time," she said, laughing. Saturday's consecration marked the end of that difficult arrival and the beginning of her permanent tenure leading the diocese.