Franz Hildebrandt (February 20, 1909, in Berlin – November 25, 1985, in Edinburgh) was a German-born Lutheran, and later Methodist, pastor and theologian, forced into exile during World War II, and subsequently active in the United Kingdom and the USA.

Hildebrandt was the son of the art professor Edmund Hildebrandt (1872–1939) and his wife Ottilie, née Schlesinger (1872–1952). He studied theology in Berlin, Marburg, and Tübingen (1926–1930). During his time in Berlin, he became a close friend of Dietrich Bonhoeffer. In 1930, he was awarded a licentiate (comparable to a Ph.D.) by the University of Berlin; his first book (EST: Das Lutherische Prinzip) was based on his doctoral dissertation.

Hildebrandt subsequently served for the Evangelical Church of the old-Prussian Union his probationary time (Vikariat) in Dobrilugk and at the Kirche zum Heilsbronnen [de] in Schöneberg (a locality of Berlin), and his first posting as an assistant pastor in Kleinmachnow; he was ordained as a pastor in Berlin on June 18, 1933. Since his mother was of Jewish descent, he was affected by the introduction of the so-called Aryan Paragraph in some of the Protestant Churches in Germany after the Nazis came to power in 1933. Hildebrandt resigned from his post as a sign of protest against this church measure and left Germany to join his friend, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who was pastor to the German congregation in London at the time.

He returned to Germany after three months, having been asked by Pastor Martin Niemöller to help him build up the Pfarrernotbund, an organisation set up to help pastors affected by the infamous Arierparagraph. Shortly after Niemöller's arrest and subsequent detention until the end of World War II, Hildebrandt was himself arrested. Friends managed to procure his release, and he left once again for England, now in permanent exile.

In subsequent years, Hildebrandt helped build up the German-speaking Protestant congregation in Cambridge, and worked for a number of church-related projects, including German-language broadcasts on the BBC. At the beginning of the war, he was interned for several months, but was released upon the intervention of his friend, Bishop George Bell of Chichester. Bell had a close relationship to both Bonhoeffer and Hildebrandt (he referred to them as 'my two boys').

In spite of his close relationship with Bell, Hildebrandt could not bring himself to join the Church of England, and become a Priest within that church, since that would have required renewed ordination by an Anglican bishop – something that Hildebrandt could not accept since it would have implicitly declared his ordination in Germany as invalid.

Hildebrandt subsequently associated more and more closely with Methodism, and eventually became a minister in that church. He began to study the theological roots of Methodism in the work of John Wesley, and developed a theological perspective on Wesley (and Methodism in general) as a development of sound Reformation theology. He started work as a Methodist pastor in Romsey Town, south of Cambridge (1946), and later in Edinburgh (1951–1953).

Hildebrandt married Nancy Hope Wright in 1943; the couple had three children; David, Ruth and Esther.