Charles F. Wishart

Charles Frederick Wishart (1870–1960) was a United States Presbyterian churchman who was President of the College of Wooster from 1919 to 1944. In 1923 he defeated William Jennings Bryan to become Moderator of the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in the United States of America at the height of the Fundamentalist–Modernist Controversy.

Biography

Charles F. Wishart was born in Ontario, Ohio on September 3, 1870, the youngest of twelve children. His mother was Sarah (Irvine) Wishart, and his father, the Rev. William Wishart (1821–1906), was a minister of the United Presbyterian Church of North America. On July 6, 1904, he married Josephine Long. They had three children, Sara (MacMillan), James Hunt, and Josephine Bosworth (Hayford).

Wishart received his early education in Ontario and Hayesville, Ohio.

Wishart Hall was built to honor him in 1966 with a gift from the citizens of Wayne County as a home for the Communications Department which also houses the Friedlander Speech and Hearing Clinic.

Controversy over the teaching of evolution and contest with William Jennings Bryan The college had taught the theory of evolution for several decades when Wishart became president, and the college library carved the name of learned men on a frieze in the main reading room that included Socrates, Moses, Plato, and Darwin. The instructor of the biology and zoology courses took pains to argue the compatibility of evolution and Christianity, but William Jennings Bryan denounced evolution when he came to visit Wooster in 1923, declaring that "it is better to know the Rock of Ages than the age of rocks."

Wishart defended the teaching of evolution at the college, and the issue became heated. At the 1923 General Assembly met in May, 1923, in Indianapolis, Indiana, the college's position and Bryan's disagreement with it were widely known. The New York Times reported that the nominations of Bryan and Wishart meant that "in a measure, the Presbyterian Church is being divided into evolutionists and anti-evolutionists." Bryan led on the first two ballots, but on the third ballot, two candidates from California withdrew and threw their support to Wishart, giving him a 451 to 427 victory.

Chief publications The God of the Unexpected Wooster, Ohio: Wooster College Press, 1923 The New Freedom in the Natural Order. New York: The Macmillan Company, 1931 The Bible in Our Day: a Symposium. New York: American Bible Society, 1935 The Book of Day: A Study in the Revelation of St. John. New York: Oxford University Press, 1935