Article

John Webster Grant

Published Online February 26, 2008

Last Edited December 12, 2013

John Webster Grant, UNITED CHURCH clergyman, church historian (b at Truro, NS 27 June 1919). He attended Dalhousie, Princeton and Oxford universities (Rhodes scholar 1941), graduated in theology from Pine Hill Divinity Hall, Halifax, and served as a wartime chaplain in the RCN.

Grant, John Webster

John Webster Grant, UNITED CHURCH clergyman, church historian (b at Truro, NS 27 June 1919). He attended Dalhousie, Princeton and Oxford universities (Rhodes scholar 1941), graduated in theology from Pine Hill Divinity Hall, Halifax, and served as a wartime chaplain in the RCN. He taught church history at Union Coll, Vancouver, 1949-59, except for one year as a visiting professor in India. In 1959 he joined RYERSON PRESS and a year later became its editor in chief. From 1963 until retirement in 1984 he was professor of church history at Emmanuel Coll, Toronto.

Besides numerous scholarly articles, he has written more than a dozen books on church history, particularly Canadian. He has been active in several academic and religious organizations, including the United Church's commission on union with the Anglicans, where he was chairman of the executive committee 1967-71. He is the recipient of several honorary degrees and numerous other awards.