He was a specialist in patristic studies and an authority on the Anglican Book of Common Prayer and on Russian Orthodox and other icons.
He was the principal Episcopal author of the Called to Common Mission accord with the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America.
In 2010, a group of his students presented a prayer book owned by William Reed Huntington to the General Theological Seminary in Wright's honor.
In 2010, as the result of a letter he published in the New York Times, Wright made a lecture tour in Kosovo as the guest of the American University there.
[6] A festschrift in his honor, One Lord, One Faith, One Baptism: Studies in Christian Ecclesiality and Ecumenism in honor of J. Robert Wright, edited by Marsha L. Dutton and Patrick Terrell Gray, copyedited by Richard Mammana, was published in 2006 by Eerdmans on the occasion of Wright's 70th birthday.