| Biographical profile |
Robert C. Gregg, Teresa Hihn Moore Professor Emeritus of Religious Studies at Stanford University, is a scholar of the multiple religious beliefs of the Mediterranean region early in the Christian era. His lifetime devotion to equity in terms of race, ethnicity, gender, and sexual preference was strongly exhibited during his years as dean for religious life (formerly dean of Memorial Church) at Stanford, 1987-1999. Gregg initiated the change of the dean’s title not long after his arrival to reflect these values of equity and inclusion. He soon became involved in the new Public Service Center (later Haas Center), where John W. Gardner was already an advisor. Later, Gregg became a member of Gardner’s “lunch bunch” of colleagues and friends who met periodically to discuss issues of the day. Before he came to Stanford, Gregg was assistant and then associate professor at Duke University’s Divinity School from 1974 to 1987. Ordained to the Episcopal priesthood in 1964, Gregg received his BA at the University of the South (Sewanee) in 1960, his MDiv from Episcopal Divinity School (Cambridge, MA) in 1963, and his PhD from The University of Pennsylvania in 1974. At Stanford, with the help of associate deans chosen to represent Stanford’s diversity, Gregg steered a course through key events of the times. Following the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake, he led fundraising to repair the significant damage sustained by Memorial Church while offering counsel to students, faculty, and staff. Despite the Episcopal Church’s opposition, Gregg conducted the first ceremony of conviction for a gay couple in that historic building; and he arranged for engagement between several of the university’s key scholars and the Dalai Lama during the latter’s 1994 visit. As dean, Gregg also taught in the Departments of Religious Studies and Classics, overseeing several successful doctoral students. When he left the deanship in 1999, Gregg helped to organize and direct the Abbasi Program in Islamic Studies, consonant with his longtime outreach to Muslims on campus. He also completed a longtime research project about recently discovered stones engraved in Greek and other languages, which helped him to identify the social interactions of Jewish, Christian, and pagan communities in Roman and Byzantine times. Gregg also researched and wrote Shared Stories, Rival Tellings, about key narratives of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. He taught briefly at St. George’s School in Newport, Rhode Island, during doctoral studies at Brown University. From 1971 to 1974, he was an assistant professor of the New Testament and Early Christianity at Seabury-Western Theological Seminary (on the campus of Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois). Born in Kansas City, Missouri, in 1938, Gregg was raised in Houston, Texas, in a large Episcopalian family. In 1961, he married Mary Layne Shine of Hinsdale, Illinois, who later become an oncology nurse. They had three biological children and an adopted African-American daughter.
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