Robert McAfee Brown (1920–2001) was an American Presbyterian minister, theologian, and activist.

He earned a bachelor's degree from Amherst College in 1943 and was ordained a Presbyterian minister in 1944.

Brown earned a Bachelor of Divinity degree from Union Theological Seminary in 1945, and served as a United States Navy chaplain from 1945 to 1946.

Initially, Brown taught at his alma mater, Union Theological Seminary, before accepting an appointment as Professor of Religion at Stanford University in 1962.

[3] Brown left Stanford in 1975 to return to Union as Professor of World Christianity and Ecumenism, but soon resigned and moved back to the Bay Area, where he taught at the Pacific School of Religion in Berkeley, California, until his retirement in 1984.