Robert McAfee Brown
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Robert McAfee Brown (born 28 May 1920 Carthage, Illinois, died 4 September 2001 near Heath, Massachusetts) was an American theologian and activist.
Brown earned a bachelor's degree from Amherst College in 1943 and was ordained as a Presbyterian minister in 1944. Brown earned a bachelor of divinity degree from Union Theological Seminary in New York in 1945 and served as a United States Navy chaplain from 1945 to 1946. The recipient of a Fulbright program grant, Brown studied at University of Oxford before completing a doctorate in the philosophy of religion at Columbia University in 1951. He married Sydney Thomson, and had four children.
Brown taught initially at his alma mater Union Theological Seminary before accepting an appointment as Professor of Religion at Stanford University in 1962. There he became an international leader in civil rights, ecumenical and social justice causes. Brown campaigned against U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War and was a co-founder of the group Clergy and Laity Concerned About Vietnam. He left Stanford in 1975 to return to Union as Professor of World Christianity and Ecumenism, but quickly found his new post unfulfilling. He resigned and moved back to the Bay Area, where he taught at the Pacific School of Religion in Berkeley until his retirement in 1984. Brown was the author of 29 books. He died on September 4, 2001, being survived by his wife.
