Molly Baskette ’96 M.Div.

Rev. Molly Baskette is the senior minister of First Church Berkeley UCC in Berkeley, CA. She has served in a wide variety of settings: Mexican orphanages; large, quiet suburban Anglo churches where the median age was 65; less-quiet urban multiracial churches where the median age was 9; and most recently, First Church Somerville, a radically renewing UCC that boasts its own Drag-Queen-in-Residence in Berkeley’s doppelgänger, Somerville, Mass. 

 

In addition to being a local church pastor, she has authored several books: Real Good Church: How Our Church Came Back from the Dead and Yours Can Too; Standing Naked Before God: the Art of Public Confession; and How to Begin When Your World is Ending: A Spiritual Field Guide to Joy Despite Everything. She also co-authored two grief workbooks for children with Nechama Liss Levenson, Remembering My Pet and Remembering My Grandparent, and she co-authored Bless this Mess: A Modern Guide to Faith and Parenting in a Chaotic World with Dr. Ellen O’Donnell. She is also a popular writer of the Daily Devotionals for the UCC Stillspeaking Writers’ Group,

 

In 2018, she was the recipient of the YDS Distinction in Congregational Ministry Award.