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.
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.[2]
On February 8, 2011, Alexander announced that he would step down as bishop of Atlanta in the fall of 2012 after the election of his successor. In 2012, he returned to the University of the South, as Dean of the School of Theology, Professor of Liturgy, and Charles Todd Quintard Professor of Theology. In November 2019 it was announced that he would step down as Dean in August 2020, but continue as Professor of Liturgy and Quintard Professor.[3]
Bishop Alexander is the author and editor of a number of publications in the fields of liturgics, homiletics, sacramental theology, and pastoral practice, including a number of his sermons.
Celebrating Liturgical Time: Days, Weeks, and Seasons, Church Publishing, 2014
This Far by Grace: A Bishop's Journey Through Questions of Homosexuality, Cowley Publications, 2003
With Ever Joyful Hearts: Essays on Liturgy and Music Honoring Marion J. Hatchett, Church Publishing, 1999
Waiting for the Coming: The Liturgical Meaning of Advent, Christmas, and Epiphany, Pastoral Press, 1993
Time and Community: Studies in Liturgical History and Theology, Pastoral Press, 1990
^Michael, Mark. "July 9, 2022". The Living Church. As one in a series of appointments to positions of churchwide service, the House of Bishops also appointed the Rt. Rev. Neil Alexander, former Bishop of Atlanta and dean and president of the School of Theology at Sewanee, as the Custodian of The Book of Common Prayer.
