The Right Reverend Craig Anderson, 83, of Odessa, MN, went to be with the Lord on Saturday, January 17, 2026, at Avera McKennan Hospital.

Funeral services will be held at 11:00 am Saturday, April 11th, 2026, at All Saints Chapel, 735 University Ave., Sewanee, Tennessee.

A memorial service will be held at 10:00 am on Thursday, May 14th, 2026, at Calvary Cathedral, 500 South Main Avenue, Sioux Falls, South Dakota.

Craig Barry Anderson touched countless lives. His dizzying curriculum vitae—he was a soldier, businessman, priest, professor, editor, bishop, dean, rector, church council president, diplomat, chaplain colonel, environmentalist, and author—outlines the depth and breadth of his relentless pursuit of good works. What it fails to illustrate is the dignity, humor, and steadfastness that he brought to his work, the joy and zeal with which he helped his friends and community, and the guidance and love he gave to his family.

Born and reared in Los Angeles, Craig graduated from Eagle Rock High School in 1959 (the school later awarded him its Distinguished Alumni Soaring Eagle Award, the first example of an eagle motif that appeared over and over throughout his life). He graduated from Valparaiso University in 1963.  Following college, he received his draft notice, was selected to attend Officer Candidate School at Ft. Benning, Georgia, and upon being commissioned, served for two years on active duty as a Lieutenant at Ft. Ord, California where he was a Rifle Range Instructor, taught bayonet and hand-to-hand combat, and was made an Executive Officer for a BCT Company.

Following his release from active duty he was employed by the Procter and Gamble Company in marketing management. In 1972 he sensed a call to ministry and priesthood in the Episcopal Church. As a Postulant for Holy Orders from the Diocese of Colorado, he attended seminary at The School of Theology, The University of the South, Sewanee, Tennessee, and received his M.Div. with honors.  During his seminary education he was awarded the Woods Leadership Award and served as Editor of the St. Luke's Journal of Theology.  He was ordained to the diaconate in 1974 and the priesthood in 1975.  He went on to receive his M.A. and Ph.D. in Theology from Vanderbilt University where he was a Hartmann Graduate Fellow and teaching assistant. During his seminary and graduate school education he fulfilled his military reserve obligation as an Instructor and Company Commander at The U.S. Army Reserve Center in Chattanooga, Tennessee. Following his ordination to the priesthood, he was asked to branch transfer from the Infantry to Chaplaincy and subsequently served as a Reserve Chaplain with the 115th Field Artillery Battalion in Winchester, Tennessee.

Craig taught at The School of Theology of the University of the South and held the C.K. Benedict Chair of Theology from 1978 through 1984.  He also served as Priest-in-Charge at Christ Episcopal Church in Alto, Tennessee.

In March of 1984, The Episcopal Diocese of South Dakota elected him to be its eighth Diocesan Bishop.  He was consecrated at Our Lady of Perpetual Help Roman Catholic Church in Rapid City. Prior to his Consecration, Bishop Anderson was adopted by the Oglala Tribe of the Pine Ridge Reservation and given the name "Wanbli Tokaheya" (Leading Eagle) at the 112th Niobrara Convocation. During his nine years as Bishop of South Dakota, he concentrated on ecumenical ministry, indigenous ministry with an emphasis on raising up Lakota persons for ordained and lay ministry and ordaining women to the diaconate and priesthood. He continued his ministry as a military chaplain for the South Dakota Military Academy and was later appointed South Dakota National Guard State Chaplain.

In recognition of his work combating institutional racism in South Dakota, Bishop Anderson received the Governor's Award for Reconciliation in 1990 and 1991 and was awarded the Sacred Hoop Peace Medal in 1991 by the Great Sioux Nation.  Valparaiso University awarded him the honorary Doctorate of Humane Letters for his work in the area of human rights and ecumenism.  He received an honorary Doctorate of Divinity from the University of the South for his leadership as Chair of the Episcopal Church's National Committee for Indian Ministry and his scholarship and teaching in the area of theology and the behavioral sciences. He was awarded a Mershon post-doctoral fellowship at Ohio State University during the academic year 1992-1993. He served concurrently as an Assisting Bishop of the Diocese of Southern Ohio.

From 1993 to 1997 Bishop Anderson served as the eleventh President, Dean and Professor of Theology at The General Theological Seminary in New York City where he founded the College for Bishops and served as Assistant Bishop of the Diocese of New York. He was a Fjellstedt Fellow at Uppsala University in Sweden for the spring semester of 1997.

In 1995 Bishop Anderson was elected President of the National Council of Churches. He was also the Episcopal Church's representative to the World Council of Churches' Ecumenical Decade.

Chaplain Colonel Anderson was on the faculty of The United States Army Chaplain's School during his time in New York.  Colonel Anderson was inducted into the United States Infantry School Hall of Fame in 2018.

In the fall of 1997 he was installed as the eleventh Headmaster of St. Paul's School in Concord, New Hampshire. While Headmaster and Rector, he continued his Episcopal ministry and served as Interim Bishop in the Diocese of Vermont. During his tenure at St. Paul's, he oversaw the restructuring of the science and mathematics curriculum and developed an integrated humanities course of studies program to include a character curriculum in conjunction with the daily Chapel program. Bishop Anderson was a member of the Harvard Business School Board for Social Enterprise.

Following his retirement from St. Paul's School in 2005, he served for a year as an Assistant Bishop in The Diocese of Idaho and interim Rector of St. Thomas Church in Sun Valley, Idaho. The Andersons then moved to Orcas Island, Washington where Bishop Anderson was the part-time Rector of Emmanuel Episcopal Parish on Orcas Island and an Assistant Bishop in the Diocese of Olympia from 2007 to 2014. He was a Board member of the Orcas Island Community Foundation. For his work in the area of conservation and environmental stewardship he received the San Juan Islands Environmental Stewardship Award.

In 2014 Craig and Liz moved to Taos, New Mexico where, as a retired Bishop, he helped in the Diocese of the Rio Grande, and where both Craig and Liz were very active grandparents.

The Andersons spent four months a year on their farm in western Minnesota. In 2005, Bishop Anderson put cropland on the farm into a conservation program (CRP), restored thirty-seven native grasses and flowers to three hundred acres, and entered a rotational grazing conservation program.

Bishop Anderson has been an active member of the Council on Foreign Relations in New York since 1994. Under President Clinton, he was a member of the President's Commission on White House Fellowships.  He also was a member of a Presidential Delegation to observe the election in Haiti in 1996. During the same year, Bishop Anderson traveled to Russia, at the invitation of the Patriarch of the Orthodox Church of Russia, with two other military chaplain-bishops to help restore the chaplaincy to the Russian Armed Forces.

Over the past forty-seven years he has been a consultant, retreat leader, guest lecturer, graduation speaker and scholar-in-residence, interim priest, pastor and bishop.

He recently served as a one-year interim in two ELCA congregations located in Appleton and Madison, Minnesota, in his capacity as a "rostered bishop and pastor" in the ELCA Southwest Synod, as he continued to assist in the Episcopal Diocese of Minnesota.

He is survived by his wife, Lizbeth Johnston Anderson, and their three children – Courtenay Bram Anderson;  Megan McCrea Anderson;  Ragnar Margaret Anderson and their families, including six grandchildren, his sister, Sharyl Anderson, and two nephews.

With Liz, Craig enjoyed golf, hiking, skiing, fly fishing, hunting pheasant, cooking, reading, watching movies, and travelling in the US and abroad.