An Apostle of the Western Church: Memoir of the Right Reverend Jackson Kemper

By: Greenough White

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Synopsis: Bishop (David) Jackson Kemper (1789-1870) was the first missionary bishop of the Episcopal Church in the United States of America. He was made a deacon of the Episcopal Church in 1811 and was ordained as a priest in 1814. In 1835, the Episcopal Church undertook to consecrate missionary bishops to preach the Gospel west of the settled areas, and Kemper was the first to be chosen. He promptly headed west. Having found that clergy who had lived all their lives in the settled East were slow to respond to his call to join him on the frontier, he determined to recruit priests from among men who were already in the West, and established a college in St. Louis, Missouri, for that purpose. He went on to found Nashotah House and Racine College in Wisconsin, and founded the mission parish that became the Cathedral Church of All Saints in Milwaukee. He constantly urged a more extensive outreach to the Native American peoples, and translations of the Scriptures and the services of the Church into their languages. From 1859 till his death in 1870, he was bishop of Wisconsin.-Print ed.