wfn.org | Robert McAfee Brown, author and educator, dies

[PCUSA NEWS <PCUSA.NEWS@ecunet.org>]

Note #6827 from PCUSA NEWS to PRESBYNEWS:

5-September-2001
01309

Robert McAfee Brown, author and educator, dies

Lifelong Presbyterian fought for civil rights, opposed war in Vietnam

by Jerry L. Van Marter

LOUISVILLE - The giants keep falling: Just weeks after the death of James
Gittings and days after the passing of David Steele, Robert McAfee Brown -
yet another legendary, celebrated Presbyterian writer - died on Sept. 4, in
a nursing home near his summer house in Heath, MA. He was 81.

During his long and storied career, Brown wrote 28 books, ranging from the
ubiquitous Sunday school primer The Bible Speaks to You to ringing defenses
of the liberation-theology movement in Latin America.

"He was a giant, always on the cutting edge," Paul Masquelier, executive
presbyter for the Presbytery of San Jose, told the San Jose Mercury-News.

Indeed, Brown gave voice to a generation of Presbyterians who fought for
civil rights and against the Vietnam War. He was jailed as a freedom rider,
arrested as a war protester, and busted at the New York headquarters of the
United Nations as a hunger striker against nuclear weapons.

His life was as varied as his books. He was a teacher at Amherst College,
Stanford University, Union Theological Seminary in New York and the Pacific
School of Religion in Berkeley, CA; a mentor to dozens of men and women from
coast to coast; a dedicated ecumenist; and a notably prolific writer (with a
little-known penchant for limericks).

Brown's approach to life can be summed up in the introductory sentence he
wrote upon co-founding the group known as Clergy and Laity Concerned About
Vietnam: "There comes a time when silence is betrayal."

Brown was accompanied on his sometimes-tumultuous journeys - sometimes led
in them - by his wife Sydney, a renowned labor activist and teacher he
married in 1944.

Brown was born in Carthage, IL, in 1920. His grandfather, Clellan B. McAfee,
was moderator of the 1929 General Assembly. His father, George W. Brown, was
a Presbyterian minister in Summit, NJ. He graduated from Amherst College -
Sydney was at nearby Smith College at the same time - and from Union
Theological Seminary in New York. He also was an Oxford-trained Fulbright
scholar.

After a year in the U.S. Navy at the end of World War II, Brown began
teaching at Amherst in 1946. In 1962 he moved to Palo Alto, CA (where he
lived until his death) and taught at Stanford until 1978. He then was a
professor at Pacific School of Religion until 1985, when he "retired,"
resolving to devote more time to his writing.

At the time of his death, Brown was completing work on his autobiography,
tentatively titled Reflections for the Long Haul: A Plea for Companions,
which will be published sometime in the coming year by Westminster John Knox
Press.

Brown, whose health had deteriorated in recent years, suffered a broken hip
in a fall about a month ago. He died at a nursing home in Greenfield, MA,
about 40 miles from Heath. In addition to his wife, he is survived by their
four children: Alison, a family therapist in Richmond, VA, Peter, a
photographer and writer in Houston, TX, Mark, a graphics artist in Mountain
View, CA, and Tom, an artist and teacher in Chesterfield, MA; and two
sisters, Harriet and Elizabeth.
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