Jeff Baker – University of Alabama School of Law professor and associate dean who is also a vice-chancellor of the Episcopal Diocese of Los Angeles – will deliver the biennial Margaret Parker Lecture at Diocesan Convention on Saturday morning, Nov. 8, in Riverside.
Titled “The Church of Dissent in an Imperial Republic,” the lecture “will address the church’s work and voice for justice in the law and public policy and its relationship to secular and political power,” Baker told The News.
Named a vice-chancellor of the diocese in 2019, Baker relocated earlier this year from Southern California to his home state of Alabama where he now serves the university law school as a clinical professor of law and associate dean of experiential learning. He and his family are now parishioners at Canterbury Episcopal Chapel at the University of Alabama.
Baker said his clinic law practice “seeks to advance social justice, human rights, and access to justice for communities with fewer resources,” while his scholarship “addresses issues at the intersection of law, policy, theology, human rights, and human dignity.”
Previously, Baker was a clinical professor of law and associate dean of clinical education and global programs at Pepperdine University Caruso School of Law where he also directed the Community Justice Clinic.
The lecture series honors the life and ministry of the late Canon Margaret Parker by addressing topics of peace and justice through the empowerment of women. The series was launched in 2008, a year after Parker died at the age of 93. She was a lay leader and ministry partner with her husband, the Rev. Canon Richard I. S. Parker, who served for 42 years as rector of St. Cross Episcopal Church in Hermosa Beach.
Parker was actively involved with the Episcopal Church Women of the diocese and Church Women United. She helped lead the way as The Episcopal Church began to include women and people of color in leadership roles in the 1960s and 1970s. Bishop J. Jon Bruno named her an honorary canon in 2003.
Then-Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori delivered the inaugural address in 2008. Subsequent guest lecturers have included the Rev. Jim Wallis, evangelical leader, author and founder of Sojourners magazine; author Renita Weems; Bishop Suffragan Barbara C. Harris, the first female bishop in the Anglican Communion; United Methodist Bishop Minerva Carcaño; labor activist Dolores Huerta; environmentalist Mary Nichols; and most recently in 2023 Dr. Robert Ross, a physician now retired as president of the California Endowment.
The lecture is offered every two years in consultation with the Parkers’ three sons led by Richard Parker, lecturer in public policy at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government.