| Birth Date: | July 3, 1921 |
| Birth Place: | Birmingham, Alabama, US |
| Death Date: | January 13, 2005 |
| Discipline: | English literature and theology |
| Alma Mater: | Princeton University |
| Awards: | Thomas Jefferson Award |
Roland Mushat Frye (July 3, 1921 – January 13, 2005) was an American English literature scholar and theologian.
Frye was born in Birmingham, Alabama. In 1943 he interrupted his studies to enlist in the United States Army and fought at the Battle of the Bulge, winning a Bronze Star.[1]
After the war, Frye taught at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia and joined Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington D.C. as a research professor in residence. He returned to teaching in 1965, accepting a professorship at Penn. He was Schelling Professor of English Literature University of Pennsylvania from 1965 until his retirement in 1983. In 1978, he co-founded the Center of Theological Inquiry, an independent institution sponsored by the Princeton Theological Seminary.[1]
Frye was awarded the Thomas Jefferson Award by the American Philosophical Society.[1] The American Philosophical Society also awarded him both the "Henry Allen Moe Prize in the Humanities" in 1989 and the "John Frederick Lewis Prize" in 1975. He was a Presbyterian elder.[1]
Frye was an opponent of creationism. He was the editor of Is God a Creationist?: The Religious Case Against Creation-Science which was positively reviewed in The Quarterly Review of Biology as an "excellent refutation of the creationist's claim to speak for orthodox religion."[2]
In 2021, Professor Frye's son published a 350-page biography of his father. Renaissance Man: A Personal Biography of Roland Mushat Frye (Opus Publ.; www.politics-prose.com).