Jennifer Baskerville-Burrows has been elected diocesan bishop for the Episcopal Diocese of Indianapolis. When consecrated on April 29, 2017, she will become the Black woman to serve as a diocesan bishop in the history of the Episcopal Church.
Rev. Baskerville-Burrows has been serving as director of networking for the Episcopal Diocese of Chicago. Earlier, she was a chaplain at Syracuse University in New York.
Rev. Baskerville-Burrows is a graduate of Smith College in Northampton, Massachusetts, where she majored in architecture. She holds a master’s degree in historic preservation planning from Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, and a master of divinity degree from the Church Divinity School of the Pacific in Berkeley, California.
Rev. Baskerville-Burrows did not join the Episcopal Church until after she graduated from college. She was ordained a priest in 1998. On September 11, 2001, Rev. Baskerville-Burrows was in Trinity Church in lower Manhattan just blocks away from the World Trade Center.
I grew up in racially segregated Austin, Texas in a Baptist Church environment … joining church and being baptised at 9 years of age. I hasten to add that for the most part my my negative racial experience was not inter-racial … but intra-racial. I graduated high school at 17 years of age and 3 months later hitched a ride to California to attend college. I continued my association with the Baptist Church environment, but later became disillioned with the atmosphere and switched over to a United Methodist Church. I became disillioned once again and briefly joined an interdenominal church … becoming disillioned once again I joined an Episcopalian Church. I think I may have found a religious approach that I have long (subconsciously) sought.