John Neil Alexander (born January 23, 1954) is a bishop and the Custodian of the Standard Book of Common Prayer in The Episcopal Church. He is Professor of Liturgy, Emeritus, and Quintard Professor of Theology,Emeritus, in the School of Theology of the University of the South, Sewanee, Tennessee. He served as dean of the School of Theology at the University of the South from 2012 to 2020, and is Dean Emeritus. From 2001 to 2012, he was the 9th bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Atlanta. Background Alexander was born in 1954 in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. In 1976 he married Lynn Tesh Alexander, a pediatric nurse practitioner. They are the parents of three adult children, John, Kelly, and Mary Catherine and grandparents of three grandsons and a granddaughter. He graduated from Moravian College in 1976 with a B.A. degree in Music. In 1979, he obtained a M.Mus. degree from the University of South Carolina. In 1980, Alexander earned a M.Div. degree from the Lutheran Theological Southern Seminary, and was ordained by the North Carolina Synod of the Lutheran Church in America, first pastoring Faith Lutheran Church in Murray Hill, New Jersey. From 1984 to 1987, Alexander taught Liturgics and Spirituality and was Dean of Keffer Memorial Chapel at Waterloo Lutheran Seminary in Ontario, Canada. In 1987, he joined the faculty at The General Theological Seminary in New York City as Assistant Professor of Preaching and Director of the Chapel, later teaching liturgics as well. He was ordained as a deacon and then priest in the Episcopal Church in 1988 by New Jersey Bishop Mellick Belshaw. He received a Th.D. degree from The General Seminary in Liturgics in 1993, where he became the Trinity Church Professor of Liturgics and Preaching. While at General, he served in a variety of parish settings in the metropolitan New York area. In 1997, he was named the Norma and Olin Mills Professor of Divinity at the School of Theology at the University of the South in Sewanee, Tennessee where he taught both liturgics and homiletics. Alexander was elected and ordained bishop of Atlanta in 2001, and was nominated for Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church in 2006. The Rt. Rev. Katharine Jefferts-Schori was elected, the first woman to hold the position. As the bishop of an owning diocese of the University of the South, he served as chancellor from 2009 to 2012. On February 8,