Robert Elliott Brown was born in Middleville, Ontario, Canada on December 17, 1873, the son of Rev. Robert and Anna Unsworth Brown. He attended the Oberlin Academy, graduated from Oberlin College (B.A.) in 1901, from Yale Divinity School (B.D.) in 1904, and in 1921 he received the D.D. degree from Carleton College.

While he served pastorates as a Congregational minister in Waterbury and New Haven, Connecticut, and in Oakland, California, he was appointed to the Oberlin College Board of Trustees in 1920. His service as a trustee ended in 1929 when he joined the Oberlin Graduate School of Theology as a Professor of Practical Theology and Human Relations, a position he held until his sudden death on November 25, 1938. He was buried in Westwood Cemetery in Oberlin.

He participated actively on Executive Committees of the National Council of the Congregational-Christian Churches and the Congregational World Movement. During World War I he served in France in 1917 and 1918 in YMCA work.

His wife, Mabel Aurelia Millikan (O.C. 1901), whom he married June 24, 1904, was the sister of Nobel Prize winning physicist, Robert E. Millikan. They had two children, Edward and Elizabeth.