His father and older brothers, Thomas and George, had moved to America in 1890, where they lived in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and worked in the area's steel mills.
After Edith's death in 1955, Lowe married Ellen Louise Stoy (1890-1979) on January 8, 1957.
Lowe entered the Pittsburgh Annual Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church in 1900.
He was appointed pastor of the Fourth Street Methodist Church in Braddock, Pennsylvania, a post he held from 1900 to 1903.
Lowe returned to the United States in 1908 and was appointed pastor in South Fork, Pennsylvania (1908–09).
Then he was appointed, in succession, to the First Methodist Churches of Cedar Falls, Iowa (1909–13) and Omaha, Nebraska (1913–21).
In 1917–18, Lowe was a lecturer under the auspices of the International Committee of the YMCA in France during World War I.
Lowe retired from the episcopacy in 1948, and was appointed executive secretary of the Methodist Commission on Overseas Relief for five years.