Roland Mushat Frye (July 3, 1921 – January 13, 2005) was an American English literature scholar and theologian.
Roland Frye | |
---|---|
Born | July 3, 1921 |
Died | January 13, 2005 |
Awards | Thomas Jefferson Award |
Academic background | |
Alma mater | Princeton University[1] |
Academic work | |
Discipline | English literature and theology |
Institutions |
Frye was born in Birmingham, Alabama. In 1943 he interrupted his studies to enlist in the United States Army and fought at the Battle of the Bulge, winning a Bronze Star.[1]
After the war, Frye taught at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia and joined Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington D.C. as a research professor in residence. He returned to teaching in 1965, accepting a professorship at Penn. He was Schelling Professor of English Literature University of Pennsylvania from 1965 until his retirement in 1983. In 1978, he co-founded the Center of Theological Inquiry, an independent institution sponsored by the Princeton Theological Seminary.[1]
Frye was awarded the Thomas Jefferson Award by the American Philosophical Society.[1] The American Philosophical Society also awarded him both the "Henry Allen Moe Prize in the Humanities" in 1989 and the "John Frederick Lewis Prize" in 1975. He was a Presbyterian elder.[1]
Frye was an opponent of creationism. He was the editor of Is God a Creationist?: The Religious Case Against Creation-Science which was positively reviewed in The Quarterly Review of Biology as an "excellent refutation of the creationist's claim to speak for orthodox religion."[2]
In 2021, Professor Frye's son published a 350-page biography of his father. Renaissance Man: A Personal Biography of Roland Mushat Frye (Opus Publ.; www.politics-prose.com).