Dates

• Existence: 1877-1965

Biography

A Congregational minister, Ora Delmer Foster (1877 -- 1965) graduated from Manchester College in Indiana. He received his B.D. and A.M degrees at Oberlin and his Ph.D. at Yale. Toward the end of World War I, he organized and directed the Comrades in Service Movement. This was an interfaith project that included all of the welfare agencies along with officers and soldiers. Dr. Foster was for many years the university secretary of the Council of Church Boards of Education. In 1922, at the Conference of Church Workers in Universities, he presented a paper proposing the idea of a School of Religion as a part of a tax-supported university. His idea was picked up by Iowa officials attending the meeting, and the University of Iowa's School of Religion was born. Dr. Foster was a guest professor there in the 1940s. He was a promoter of interfaith and church-state understanding and cooperation. His life's work was in the field of inter-cultural relations. A wide traveler and unofficial ambassador of goodwill, he spent many years working and studying in Mexico and South America. Dr. O. Delmer Foster died in Claremont, California, at the age of eighty-seven.

Found in 1 Collection or Record: