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Revision as of 07:55, 5 June 2010
Jackson Kemper | |
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| Born | December 24, 1789 Pleasant Valley, Columbia County, New York |
| Died | May 24, 1870 (aged 80) |
Bishop Jackson Kemper (December 24, 1789 – May 24, 1870) was the first missionary bishop of the Episcopal Church in the United States of America.
Baptized David Jackson Kemper by Dr. Benjamin Moore, the Assistant Rector of his parents' congregation at New York City's Trinity Church, he would eventually drop the given name "David." He had been born in the Hudson River Valley of New York, where his parents had taken temporary refuge during a smallpox outbreak in New York City. He was the son of Col. Daniel Kemper, a former aide-de-camp to Gen. George Washington at the battles of Germantown and Monmouth during the American Revolution, and Elizabeth (Marius) Kemper, who descended from well-known families of the Dutch New Amsterdam era.
He entered Columbia College at the age of fifteen, where he studied theology under Dr. Henry Hobart and graduated in 1809 as the valedictorian of his class. Relocating to Philadelphia, 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. He ordained a native American, Enmegahbowh, of the Ottawa tribe as a deacon in 1859.
Kemper supported the Oxford Movement, although he maintained the importance of separation from the Roman Catholic Church. He ordained James De Koven as a priest in 1855, and supported Bishop Benjamin Onderdonk during his trial. In 1846 he purchased a property adjacent to Nashotah House and spent the rest of his life there. From 1859 until his death in 1870, he was bishop of Wisconsin, but the effect of his labors covered a far wider area.
Veneration
Kemper is honored with a feast day on the liturgical calendar of the Episcopal Church (USA) on May 24.
See also
Sources
- From the Episcopal Calendar
- Documents by and about Jackson Kemper from Project Canterbury
- A History of the Episcopal Church by Robert W. Prichard, (Harrisburg, PA: Morehouse Pub., 1999)
- The Story of a College by James DeKoven, (Middletown, Conn., 1862)
- The Catholic Movement in the American Episcopal Church by George E. DeMille, (Philadelphia: Church Historical Society, 1941)
- The Story of Nashotah by John H Egar (Milwaukee: Burdick & Armitage, 1874)
- The Life of Reverend James De Koven D.D.: Sometime Warden of Racine College by William C Pope, (New York: James Pott & Company, 1899)
- Apostle of the Wilderness by James Lloyd Breck, Edited by Charles Breck (Nashotah: 1992)