Bishop Jennifer Baskerville-Burrows of Indianapolis will address the 125th graduating class of Church Divinity School of the Pacific on May 24.
The event is open to the public and will be broadcast live online at cdsp.edu/livestream and trinitywallstreet.org beginning at 10:30 a.m.
In 2016, Baskerville-Burrows became the first black woman to be elected a diocesan bishop in the Episcopal Church. She received an MDiv from CDSP in 1997 and was CDSP’s director of alumni/ae and church relations from 2002 to 2004. She holds an MA in historic preservation planning from Cornell University and a bachelor’s degree in architecture with a minor in urban studies from Smith College.
Before being elected bishop, she served in the dioceses of Newark, Central New York, and Chicago. In 2018, the seminary established the Bishop Jennifer Baskerville-Burrows Scholarship Fund to benefit black and Native American students.
During the ceremony, CDSP will grant honorary degrees to Baskerville-Burrows; Ernesto Cortés Jr. of the Industrial Areas Foundation; and the Rev. Gay Clark Jennings, president of the House of Deputies.
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.
