Leadership Gallery

The Most Reverend George Browne, Archbishop of West Africa and Bishop of Liberia, meets with Presiding Bishop Browning during a trip to the U.S. with other Liberian church leaders, 1990.

The Right Reverend George Daniel Browne, 1979.

Browne was born in Garroway, Liberia in 1933. A graduate of Cuttington College in Liberia, he came to the United States and attended Virginia Theological Seminary. Upon his ordination to the priesthood in 1963, he returned to his native Liberia and served in a number of parishes and as a teacher at Cuttington College. In time, he became the official historian of the Diocese.

Browne was consecrated in 1970 as Bishop of Liberia and the first missionary bishop elected directly by his diocese. While in Liberia, he lead the Church toward independence from the American Church and into membership in the Province of West Africa. Browne served as Bishop of Liberia and a visionary of peace during a time of great civil unrest until 1982. He then became Primate of the Province of West Africa upon its entrance into the Anglican Communion as an independent province.

As a civic minded clergyman, Browne also served on a number of boards including Booker Washington Institute, Boys Town Institute, Dodokeh Rehabilitation Center, and Liberian Council of Churches and as a member of the Islam in Africa Project. The Liberian military government appointed him a member of the National Constitution Drafting Commission in 1981. Browne also made a number of scholarly contributions before his death in Milwaukee, Wisconsin in 1993 including A Complete List of Bishops, Priests and Deacons, 1835-1969; Ten Years Episcopacy: A Reflection; The Episcopal Church of Liberia under Indigenous Leadership: Reflections of a Twenty-Year Episcopate; and as coauthor of Realities and Visions. He was buried in Virginia, Liberia.

His personal papers are located at The Archives of the Episcopal Church. [Sources]