Our People

The Rev. Dr. Jennifer M. McBride (Jenny) has served as Associate Rector at All Saints’ Episcopal Church since 2022. Before her ordination to the priesthood, Jenny was a college and seminary professor, whose scholarship and teaching focused on modern theology, Christian social ethics, and faith and politics. She was Associate Dean and Associate Professor of Theology and Ethics at McCormick Theological Seminary in Chicago (2016-2022), where she directed a Doctor of Ministry program aimed at enlarging pastors’ ministry capacities. Jenny held the Board of Regents Endowed Chair in Ethics at Wartburg College in Iowa (2011-2016), and before that served as a Postdoctoral Fellow in Religious Practices and Practical Theology at Emory University, where she taught at Candler School of Theology. After her fellowship, Jenny directed a theology certificate program for incarcerated women through Emory's Candler School of Theology (2008-2011).

 

Jenny was a professor and close friend of Kelly Gissendaner, who was the only woman on Georgia's death row until her execution in 2015, and was a leading activist in the international #KellyOnMyMind campaign. Her most recent book, You Shall Not Condemn, publishes letters between Kelly and internationally renowned German theologian, Jürgen Moltmann. While teaching in the prison program, Jenny became an active participant at the Open Door Community in Atlanta, an intentionally interracial, residential, Christian activist and worshipping community that, for forty years, had been engaged in works of mercy and justice with people experiencing incarceration and homelessness.

  

Jenny is author of You Shall Not Condemn: A Story of Faith and Advocacy on Death Row (Cascade, 2022), Radical Discipleship: A Liturgical Politics of the Gospel (Fortress, 2017), The Church for the World: A Theology of Public Witness (Oxford University Press, 2011), and is co-editor of Bonhoeffer and King: Their Legacies and Import for Christian Social Thought. In addition to book chapters and scholarly articles, her work has appeared in popular publications like The Christian Century and CNN.com and has been featured in the New York Times. She is the recent past president of the International Bonhoeffer Society – English Language Section, an academic organization that brought the writings of the German pastor-theologian and Nazi-resister, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, to the English-speaking world. She serves as co-editor of the T&T Clark book series, New Studies in Bonhoeffer’s Theology and Ethics.

 

Originally from Chattanooga, TN, Jenny received a B.A. in Religious Studies from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (1999) and a M.A. and Ph.D. in Religious Studies from the University of Virginia (2008). She also holds a Certificate in Anglican Studies from Bexley Seabury Seminary (2022). Jenny is married to Dr. Thomas Fabisiak, who is the founding co-executive director of the Georgia Coalition for Higher Education in Prison and Associate Dean at Life University, where he oversees a college degree program for women in Georgia prisons. They are so grateful to be living and serving in this city they love.