Frederick C. Grant (1891–1974)

Frederick Clifton Grant was a theologian, New Testament scholar and priest in the Episcopal Church. He was born in Beloit, Wisconsin on February 2, 1891. He began his undergraduate studies at Lawrence College in 1909, and went on to earn his B.D. from General Theological Seminary from 1911 to 1912. He was ordained in the Protestant Episcopal Church on June 6, 1912, though this exact date varies from Union's alumni records and Reverend Grant's profile from the Domestic and Foreign Missionary Society of the Episcopal Church. He pursued postgraduate studies in theology at Western Theological Seminary in Chicago from 1914 to 1922, earning his S.T.M. (Sacrae Theologiae Magister) in 1916 and a doctorate in Theology in 1922. Reverend Grant's service to the Episcopal Church took place chiefly in the Midwest, and covered a wide range of leadership roles in parishes of varying sizes. His first post-ordination position was as a curate with St. Mark's Cathedral in Grand Rapids, Michigan from 1912 to 1913. He was priest-in-charge at St. Paul's Church in DeKalb, Illinois from 1913 to 1915, and worked as an assistant at St. Luke's Church in Evanston from 1917 to 1920. Grant also served as a rector at both St. Luke's Church in Dixon, Illinois (1915-1917) and Chicago's Trinity Church from 1920 to 1924. Much of Grant's career outside of his parishes took place in academia, both as a professor and administrator. From 1924 to 1926, Reverend Grant was dean at Bexley Hall (a seminary established in conjunction with Kenyon College) in Ohio from 1924 to 1926 before accepting a professorship in systematic theology at Berkeley Divinity School in Middletown, Connecticut from 1926 to 1927. Grant became president of Seabury-Western Theological Seminary in Evanston, a post he held from 1927 to 1938, and which saw him leading the merger between Western Seminary and Seabury in 1933. Grant's final and significant work in academia would be at Union, where he accepted the Edward Robinson Professor of Biblical Theology at Union Theological Seminary, which he would hold from 1938 until his retirement in 1959.

Grant was a prolific writer, chiefly on issues relevant to Anglican New Testament scholarship. He was an avid translator, notably of Rudolf Bultmann's and Johannes Weiss's texts on criticism and early Christianity, and serving on the translation committee for the Revised Standard Version of the New Testament. He also served as editor-in-chief of the Anglican Theological Review from 1924 to 1955. Grant's 1957 book, The Gospels: Their Origin and Their Growth, engages the synoptic problem -- or the study of the written narrative of literary interpretations and the interrelatedness of the narratives in the Gospels of Matthew, Mark and Luke – to think through mythical and the manifestation of literary traditions consistent across all three narratives. Grant proved to be invested in historical-critical methods of interpreting Biblical texts, and his extensive translating work and scholarship show his significance in popularizing these ideas to the United States. Grant wrote thirty one books, including The Early Days of Christianity, An Introduction to New Testament Thought, How to Read the Bible, The Life and Times of Jesus, The Practice of Religion, and Translating The Bible. Reverend Grant received doctorate degrees from a number of institutions: Nashotah House at Garrett Biblical Institute (1938); Kenyon College (1939); Bishops University (1948); General Theological Seminary (1952), University of Chicago (1953), and Princeton University (1958). Reverend Grant died on July 11, 1974 in New York City.