Stephen Elliott (August 31, 1806 – December 21, 1866) was the 37th bishop of the Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States of America.

Elliott had a conversion experience during a sermon by Presbyterian evangelist Daniel Baker (1791–1857) at the Parish Church of St. Helena in Beaufort, South Carolina.

[1] He became a candidate for holy orders in the Episcopal Church in 1833, was ordained a deacon on February 15, 1835, by Bishop Nathaniel Bowen of South Carolina, and a priest the following year.

In 1845 he resigned the rectorship of St. John's to take charge of the Female Institute at Montpelier, Georgia, which he had founded several years earlier.

He was also instrumental, with Bishops Leonidas Polk and James Hervey Otey, in founding The University of the South at Sewanee, Tennessee.

A supporter of slavery, in July 1855 Elliott explained this in a letter to Amelia Matilda Murray, which he agreed she could publish:[5] For nearly a hundred years the English and American Churches have been striving to civilize and Christianize Western Africa, and with what result?

At this very moment there are from three to four millions of Africans, educating for earth and for Heaven in the so vilified Southern States—learning the very best lessons for a semi-barbarous people—lessons of self-control, of obedience, of perseverance, of adaptation of means to ends; learning, above all, where their weakness lies, and how they may acquire strength for the battle of life.