James Edwin Orr

James Edwin Orr was born and raised in Belfast and began preaching before he was twenty. After work as a baker and study at Belfast's College of Technology, he undertook extensive evangelistic journeys through Britain, Europe, North America, Australia, New Zealand, and later much of the world. He wrote lively accounts of these travels, including All Your Need, the 1936 book in which Search Me, O God first appeared. He was ordained to the Baptist ministry in New Jersey in 1940.

During the Second World War Orr served as a chaplain in the United States Army Air Forces in the Pacific. He earned graduate degrees in the United States and completed a doctorate at Oxford in 1948 on the nineteenth-century evangelical awakening in Britain. This scholarship helped redirect his career from itinerant evangelism toward the systematic study of revival history.

Orr taught at Fuller Theological Seminary's School of World Mission from 1966 until 1981 and remained professor emeritus. His many books traced awakenings across continents, and he helped establish the Oxford Reading and Research Conference on Evangelical Awakenings. Search Me, O God grew from his 1936 New Zealand ministry and condenses a conviction that marked his preaching and research: corporate renewal requires honest repentance and personal submission to God. He died in 1987 after speaking at a conference in North Carolina.