He was born in Connecticut Farms, in Union Township, New Jersey, and is most widely known as the father of writer Stephen Crane.

[3] Throughout his career as an educator, pastor and writer, Crane was active in local temperance movements, and strongly supported abolitionist causes.

He rejected the mid-19th century Holiness Movement of Christian perfection as unattainable and unreasonable; Crane's opposition subsequently limited his advancement as an administrator in the Methodist Episcopal denomination and drew the wrath of his father-in-law, Bishop George Peck.

[6] Crane's literary works traditionally have been used as a foil for his son's urban grittiness, but more recent scholarship posits his writing as a critique of nineteenth century social failures to address problems of poverty, disease, education, and employment.

[7] In his "Christ and the Painters", which was published in the Sunday School Times in 1877, he criticized the sentimental piety of contemporary painters who depicted Jesus blessing a clutch of rosy cheeked children; such "specimens of infantile innocence and grace" as were portrayed in these paintings were "perhaps just such a lot of little wretches as the modern traveler in that same region sees crawling out of their mud huts, dirty, unkempt, ragged, or without even a rag, to stare at him with their sore eyes.

"[8] He rejected his contemporaries overly simplistic sentimentality that desensitized people to the real and abject problems of their fellow beings.