Jackson Kemper

Jackson Kemper was the first missionary bishop of the Episcopal Church — consecrated in 1835 with jurisdiction over the vast American frontier. For thirty-five years he traveled the western territories by horseback, stagecoach, canoe, and foot, planting churches, ordaining clergy, founding schools, and organizing dioceses in a region where Episcopalians were vastly outnumbered. His episcopate established the principle that the church must go to the people rather than wait for people to come to the church.

Kemper's legacy was established immediately among frontier Episcopalians as the model of the missionary bishop — a figure who endured hardship, traveled vast distances, and planted churches in wilderness territories. Nashotah House seminary became a living monument to his vision of educated clergy for frontier ministry, and it remains active and influential. The diocesan structures he established — Indiana, Wisconsin, Iowa, Minnesota, Nebraska, Kansas — became the skeleton of the Episcopal Church's western presence and validate his strategic vision. Within Episcopal historiography, he is invoked as the exemplar of the episcopate as a missionary and itinerant office rather than a settled dignitary position. His age at death (eighty) combined with the physical demands of his ministry reinforces the tradition of his sacrificial dedication.

Kemper was born in Pleasant Valley, New York, in 1789 and educated at Columbia College and the General Theological Seminary. Ordained in 1814, he served parishes in Connecticut and Philadelphia before the General Convention elected him Missionary Bishop of Indiana and Missouri in 1835.

His territory was staggering. At various points his jurisdiction included Indiana, Missouri, Wisconsin, Iowa, Minnesota, Nebraska, and Kansas — an area larger than Western Europe. He traveled ceaselessly, covering thousands of miles each year on horseback and by water, preaching in courthouses, taverns, and private homes, celebrating the Eucharist wherever he could gather a congregation.

Kemper founded Nashotah House, a seminary and monastic community in Wisconsin (1842), and Racine College (1852), institutions designed to train clergy for frontier ministry. He was instrumental in organizing the dioceses of Indiana, Wisconsin, Iowa, Minnesota, Nebraska, and Kansas — effectively creating the institutional structure of the Episcopal Church across the Midwest.

His ministry also extended to Native American communities, where he supported mission work among the Oneida and other peoples, though the record here reflects the complex and painful realities of westward expansion and Indigenous displacement in that era.

Kemper served until his death on May 24, 1870, at the age of eighty, having spent thirty-five years in missionary work that transformed the Episcopal Church from an Eastern establishment institution into a genuinely national church.

• Bishop
• Missionary