![The Rev. Valerie Bailey Fischer. PHOTO COURTESY OF ELIZABETH SOLAKA The Rev. Valerie Bailey Fischer. PHOTO COURTESY OF ELIZABETH SOLAKA](https://dioceseofnewark.org/sites/default/files/styles/node_hero_image/public/VBaileyFischer.jpg?itok=qaOXdPEP)
July 21, 2011
By:
Kevin G. DeMarrais / Teaneck Suburbanite
Until a decade ago, Valerie Bailey Fischer was living a double life. Starting during her undergraduate days at Penn State, and continuing in the years after graduation, she split her time between journalism and religion, writing for newspapers in two states while working as a campus chaplain.
She enjoyed both, but increasingly recognized that her life's calling was in the church. So with encouragement from close friends, she gave up journalism and enrolled at the Union Theological Seminary in New York in 2001 as the first step toward becoming an Episcopal priest.
Now she's making another major move. After serving as assistant rector of two churches in the Boston area, the Rev. Valerie Bailey Fischer has accepted the call as the seventh rector of St. Mark's Episcopal Church in Teaneck.