J. Robert Wright (October 20, 1936) is the St. Mark's in the Bowery Professor of Ecclesiastical History at General Theological Seminary in New York City.[1] A specialist in patristic studies and the world's leading authority on the Anglican Book of Common Prayer and on Russian Orthodox and other icons, he is also renowned for his engagement in ecumenical dialogues between the US Episcopal Church and other churches, particularly the Roman Catholic, Armenian Apostolic. and Russian Orthodox, as well as the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, the Old Catholics and the Philippine Independent Church. He was the principal Episcopal author of the Called to Common Mission accord with the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America,
Wright did his undergraduate work at the University of the South in Sewanee and also studied at Oxford University and the Pontifical Institute of Medieval Studies in Toronto. He is currently the longest-tenured faculty member at General Theological Seminary.
A festschrift in his honor, One Lord, One Faith, One Baptism: Studies in Christian Ecclesiality and Ecumenism in honor of J. Robert Wright, edited by Marsha L. Dutton and Patrick Terrell Gray, was published in 2006 by Eerdmans on the occasion of Wright's seventieth birthday.[2]
He has written a history of St. Thomas Church (New York City), as well as a history of the Church and the English Crown in the fourteenth century, based on his research into the records of Archbishop Walter Reynolds. In 2008, he published a commentary on the Ecclesiastical History of the Venerable Bede.
He is the president of the US Anglican Society and the chaplain, in perpetuity, of the Guild of Scholars of The Episcopal Church. Wright is also the Historiographer of the Episcopal Church in the US and a member of the advisory board of Project Canterbury. In 2007, he was awarded the Archbishop of Canterbury's Cross of St. Augustine for his scholarly contribution to ecumenical dialogue. IN 2010, a group of his students presented a prayer book owned by to the General Theological Seminary in Wright's honor.