author
Alfred Wesley Wishart
1865–1933
A Baptist minister and church historian, he wrote clear, accessible books on monasticism and religion for general readers. He is also remembered for leading Grand Rapids’s Fountain Street Church during a period of major change and rebuilding.
1 Audiobook
A Short History of Monks and Monasteries
by Alfred Wesley Wishart
About the author
Born in New York in 1865, Alfred Wesley Wishart became a Baptist minister, scholar, and author whose work often brought church history to a broad audience. Records from the Bentley Historical Library and library catalogs connect him with study at Colgate and the University of Chicago, and with a long career in ministry and religious writing.
Wishart is best known as the author of A Short History of Monks and Monasteries and other religious works and sermons that aimed to explain complex ideas in a direct, readable way. His name is also closely tied to Fountain Street Church in Grand Rapids, where he served as senior minister during the years when a new church building rose after the 1917 fire.
He died in 1933. Surviving archival collections of his lessons and sermons suggest a writer and preacher deeply engaged with modern religious thought, church history, and the public life of his congregation.