Philip Frazier

Francis Philip Frazier, commonly credited as Philip Frazier, was a Dakota or Sioux Christian minister, educator, translator, and hymn paraphraser. Born in 1892 into a Dakota family with a history of Christian ministry, he studied at the Santee Indian School, Yankton College Academy, and Northfield Mount Hermon School. He also attended Dartmouth College before leaving to serve in the United States Army. He later graduated from Oberlin College in 1922 and earned a divinity degree from Chicago Theological Seminary in 1925.

Frazier was ordained in 1926 and served in ministry among Dakota and Sioux communities. Later in life he supervised the Sioux Indian Mission at the Standing Rock Reservation in North Dakota. Dartmouth recognized his ministry with an honorary Doctor of Divinity degree in 1964, the year of his death.

His best-known contribution to English-language hymnody is his 1929 paraphrase of portions of a nineteenth-century Dakota hymn by Joseph Renville. Frazier's work belongs within a broader career of Indigenous Christian ministry and interpretation rather than being an isolated literary exercise. His English paraphrase helped a Dakota-language worship tradition enter a much wider range of North American hymnals.