Robert Elliott Speer

Robert Elliott Speer (born Huntingdon, Pennsylvania, 10 September 1867 - 23 November 1947) was an American religious leader and authority on missions.

He was born at Huntingdon, Pennsylvania on 10 September 1867. He graduated from Phillips Academy in 1886 and from Princeton in 1889, and studied at Princeton Theological Seminary in 1890-91.

In 1891 he was appointed secretary of the American Presbyterian Mission. He visited missions in Persia, India, China, Korea, and Japan in 1896-97, and in South America in 1909 and later made similar tours. In Princeton he was greatly influenced by Arthur Tappan Pierson. Under his leadership the foreign missions of the Presbyterian church became remarkably successful. Although he published two articles in The Fundamentals, he is often considered a liberal because he sided with the Presbyterian Church (USA) and opposed John Gresham Machen during the anti-liberal/modernist controversies of the 1930s.

He died on 3 November 1947.

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