Walter Russell Bowie

Walter Russell Bowie (October 8, 1882 – April 23, 1969), was a priest, author, editor, educator, hymn writer, and lecturer in the Episcopal Church.

Walter Russell Bowie was born in Richmond, Virginia, actually the fourth of his family to have the same name, and with family relationships among the First Families of Virginia. Nonetheless, he traveled north for his college education, receiving a B.A. (1904) and M.A. (1905) from Harvard University. As a Harvard undergraduate Bowie was co-editor of The Harvard Crimson, with Franklin D. Roosevelt.

He then returned to Virginia and entered the Protestant Episcopal Theological Seminary, now known as Virginia Theological Seminary in Alexandria, Virginia, where he earned a B.D. in 1908 (shortly after which he was ordained a deacon) and later earned a D.D. (1919).

The Rev. Mr. Bowie married Jean Laverack on September 29, 1909. His aunt was the suffragist and educationist Mary-Cooke Branch Munford, and novelist James Branch Cabell was kin as well.

Bowie was ordained a priest in 1909. His initial service was at Emmanuel Episcopal Church in Albemarle County, Virginia. Rev. Bowie was then called to St. Paul's Church in Richmond, Virginia where he had been baptised. He served as its rector from 1911 until called by Grace Church in New York City in 1923, although that service was actually interrupted by World War I (during which Bowie served as a Red Cross chaplain at Base Hospital 45 in France). While in Richmond, Bowie was editor of the Southern Churchman.

Bowie became known as a preacher as well as author and hymnist. Particularly in the 1920s, he advocated for what later become known as the Social Gospel: supporting the League of Nations, advocating US immigration reform, and opposing the Ku Klux Klan and Fundamentalism. While in New York, particularly in the 1920s, Bowie joined the American Committee for Protection of Foreign Born, The Church League for Industrial Democracy, the Citizens’ Committee to Free Earl Browder, and the Civil Rights Congress.

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