Bert A. Anderson Jr.
February 18, 2029 – August 13, 2024
[The Episcopal News] The Rev. Bert Anderson Jr., 95, a priest of the Diocese of Los Angeles and resident of Ashland, Oregon, died Aug. 13. He served most recently as an assisting priest at Trinity Church in Ashland, beginning in 2002.
Anderson was married to Nancy Daniels Anderson, who survives him. The couple had three children. Information about survivors and services was not immediately available.
Before his 1997 retirement, Anderson was a marriage and family counselor and non-parochial priest. He had served at Trinity Church, Redlands from 1986 to 1988 after several years at Church of the Holy Spirit, Bullhead City, Arizona. Previously he was vicar, then rector, of St. Andrew’s by-the-Sea, San Diego (then part of the Diocese of Los Angeles), which achieved parish status and built a new church during his tenure. He also served on the board of Episcopal Community Services and as a chaplain at juvenile corrective institution. In the Diocese of Los Angeles he was a member of the Commission on Stewardship Education.
After retirement, Anderson and his wife relocated to Ashland, where he participated in writers’ workshops and began to write plays, including Mr. Brightside and the Bonfire Nights and BONE: Dying Into Life. He directed Atelier, a popular playwrights and actors’ workshop that provides a free venue for dramatic readings of new plays by local playwrights in Ashland, which is the home of the highly regarded Oregon Shakespeare Festival. He worked with a number of OSF actors at the workshop, as well as other community members.
A person of broad interests, Anderson was author of several books and articles, including Building Community: Revitalizing Church and “Dyspnea During Panic Attacks” (1998). He was a member of American Association of Psychophysiology and Biofeedback; the California Association of Family Therapists; and the International Society for the Advancement Of Respiratory Psychophysiology. He had a deep interest in science, and was a signer of The Clergy Letter Project, “an endeavor designed to demonstrate that religion and science can be compatible and to elevate the quality of the debate of this issue,” according to its website. He also wrote for a science website, The Universe.
Anderson was born in Los Angeles, California, on February. 18, 1929. His family joined St. Luke’s of-the-Mountains Episcopal Church when he was 7 years old. After graduating from Glendale High School Anderson earned a bachelor’s degree at California State University in 1956, followed by a master of divinity degree at CDSP in 1959. In 1988 he received a doctorate from Sierra University in Costa Mesa.
Bishop Francis Eric Bloy, third bishop of Los Angeles, ordained him to the diaconate on June 22, 1959 and to the priesthood on February. 1, 1960. Anderson was married on December 2, 1973 to Nancy Daniels.
The Ashland Theater journal interviewed Anderson in 2011 about his plays and experience with the writer’s workshop.