The Rt. Rev. Harold A. (Hoppy) Hopkins Jr., who spent a decade overseeing episcopal elections and the discipline of bishops, died Jan. 3. He was 88.
Born in Germantown, PA, he was a graduate of the University of Pennsylvania and General Theological Seminary. He took U.S. Navy officer’s training for two years, but left to attend seminary. He was ordained deacon and priest in 1955Â and served churches in New York and Maine.
He was the author of Nominees in an Episcopal Process (1989) and The Interval Between Election and Consecration (1992), and contributed to Restoring the Soul of a Church (1995).
Hopkins was Bishop of North Dakota from 1980 to 1988 and then returned to Maine and served as director of the Episcopal Church’s Office of Pastoral Development.
In his years of retirement in Maine, the bishop taught English as a second language, carved wood, played banjo, and repaired clocks. His wife, Nancy, died in 2018.
His funeral is scheduled for April 6 at St. Bartholomew’s, Yarmouth, which he founded. The Rt. Rev. Steve Lane, Bishop of Maine, will preside.
Matthew Townsend is a Halifax-based freelance journalist and volunteer advocate for survivors of sexual misconduct in Anglican settings. He served as editor of the Anglican Journal from 2019 to 2021 and communications missioner for the Anglican Diocese of Quebec from 2019 to 2022. He and his wife recently entered catechism class in the Orthodox Church in America.
