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Ivan Lee Holt (1886-1967), American minister and bishop, was born in Dewitt, Arkansas, on January 9, 1886 to Robert Paine and Ella (Thomas) Holt. He received an A.B. degree from Vanderbilt University in 1904 and a Ph.D. from the University of Chicago in 1909. He began his career as professor of Greek and Latin at the Stuttgart Training School in Arkansas, where he served from 1909-1911. Following that, he became pastor of Centenary Church, Cape Girardeau, Missouri and served for four years. In 1915, he joined the faculty of Southern Methodist University as professor of Old Testament Literature, chair of the theological faculty and chaplain of the University.
In 1918, Holt returned to the pastorate at Saint John's Church in St. Louis. He was elected bishop at the last General Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South (1938), serving in Texas and New Mexico for a year, and then in Dallas until 1944. He was a bishop in Missouri until his retirement in 1956.
He is the author of the Babylonian Contract Tablets; The Return of Spring to Man's Soul; The Search for a New Strategy in Protestantism; The Methodists of the World; Eugene Russell Hendrix, Servant of the Kingdom, and The Missouri Bishops.
Holt was deeply concerned with ecumenism. He was delegate to the first assembly of the World Council of Churches in Amsterdam, and to the second assembly in Evanston, Illinois. He was president of the Federal Council of Churches from 1935-1936 and a member of the committee which drew up the charter for the National Council of Churches. He was also active in world Methodism, and was elected president of the World Methodist Council, holding that position as president-emeritus while he lived.
Holt married Leland Burks on June 6, 1906. They had a son, Ivan Lee Jr., who became a judge in St. Louis, Missouri . After the death of this first wife in 1948, Holt married Starr Carithers of Georgia in 1950. After she died in 1958, he married Modena McPherson Rudisell of Duluth, Georgia. He died in Atlanta, Georgia on January 12, 1967 and is buried in St. Louis.