R. Deane Postlethwaite

R. Deane Postlethwaite (1925–1980) was an American United Methodist minister, educator, and hymn writer whose work joined pastoral ministry with attention to the language congregations use for God. A Kansas native, he earned a B.A. in 1947 and an M.A. in 1948 from the University of Kansas. From 1948 to 1951 he taught political science at Baker University in Baldwin City, Kansas, before pursuing theological education at Union Theological Seminary in New York, where he received the M.Div. in 1956.

Postlethwaite was ordained a deacon in 1956 and an elder in 1958 in the Methodist tradition that later became The United Methodist Church. He served congregations in Kansas, New York, and Minnesota, including Prospect Park, Good Samaritan, and Minnehaha in the Twin Cities. He continued advanced study at United Theological Seminary of the Twin Cities and completed a D.Min. in 1979. His ministry combined preaching, teaching, pastoral care, and a strong interest in worship language.

As a hymn writer, Postlethwaite aimed to connect congregational song with the lived experience of worshipers and with the surrounding acts of prayer, preaching, Scripture reading, and praise. His texts include “Water Has Held Us,” a baptismal hymn dated 1978, and the hymn later known as “The Care the Eagle Gives Her Young.” The latter was published posthumously in Eight Hymns, In Context (1980) under the heading “For a Recognition of God’s Feminine Attributes.” His small but distinctive hymn corpus contributed to late twentieth-century conversations about biblical imagery for God, inclusive language, providence, and pastoral formation.