Arthur C. Lichtenberger

Who was Arthur C. Lichtenberger?

Arthur Carl Lichtenberger was a bishop of the Episcopal Church in the United States. He served as Bishop of Missouri from 1952 to 1959, and as Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church from 1958 to 1964.

Lichtenberger was born in Oshkosh, Wisconsin, where his father ran a grocery store. He attended Kenyon College in Gambier, Ohio, where he played quarterback on the football team. He graduated from Kenyon with a Bachelor of Philosophy degree in 1923, and then entered the Episcopal Theological School in Cambridge, Massachusetts. He earned his Bachelor of Divinity degree in 1925, and did his postgraduate work at the General Theological Seminary in Manhattan. He was ordained a deacon on March 21, 1925, and a priest on November 21, 1926.

He began his ministry as missionary professor of New Testament at St. Paul's Divinity School in Wuchang. In 1928 he returned to the U.S. to be rector of Grace Church in Cincinnati, Ohio for five years, then rector of St. Paul's Church in Brookline, Massachusetts, for eight years.

After serving as dean of Trinity Cathedral in Newark, New Jersey he went back to teaching as professor of pastoral theology at General Theological Seminary in New York City. He was the Bishop of Missouri from 1951 until he was elected the Presiding Bishop in 1958. In 1956 he assumed the chairmanship of an Episcopal delegation studying the problems of the Church of South India.