Walter Russell Bowie

Walter Russell Bowie was born in Richmond, Virginia, on October 8, 1882. He studied at Harvard, earning his bachelor's degree in 1904 and a master's in 1905, and completed a B.D. at Virginia Theological Seminary in 1908. After serving Emmanuel Church in Greenwood, Virginia, he became rector of St. Paul's Church in Richmond and then of Grace Church in New York City.

Bowie's preaching joined biblical interpretation with the Social Gospel's concern for public righteousness. In Richmond he opposed the Ku Klux Klan and advocated better treatment of African Americans as well as wider opportunities for women. During the First World War he served as a Red Cross chaplain at a Virginia hospital unit in France; the suffering he witnessed strengthened his pacifist convictions. Voice strain ended his parish ministry in 1939.

He then taught pastoral theology at Union Theological Seminary, later returning to Virginia Theological Seminary as professor of homiletics. Bowie served on the Revised Standard Version committee and the editorial board of The Interpreter's Bible, and he wrote more than thirty books, including The Story of the Bible. Henry Sloane Coffin requested O Holy City, Seen of John for Hymns of the Kingdom of God, and Bowie wrote it in 1909 as a young priest. Its union of Revelation's new city with social responsibility became his most widely circulated hymn text.