Alan Wisdom

Alan Wisdom is a freelance writer exploring issues of Christian witness in U.S. and global society. He serves as an adjunct fellow with the Institute on Religion & Democracy.

Wisdom was on the IRD staff from August 1985 to July 2011 as a research assistant, research associate, vice president, and interim president. He also edited the IRD’s quarterly Faith & Freedom and directed its Presbyterian Action program. He has attended every Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) General Assembly since 1988, seeking a PCUSA social witness that is more closely aligned with biblical teachings and the convictions of church members. Wisdom has written for the IRD and other publications on topics ranging from crises in Latin America and the Middle East to marriage in Christian teaching and social history, U.S. immigration policy, the National and World Councils of Churches, the National Association of Evangelicals, and the future of Christian ecumenism.

Wisdom is a deacon and elder at Georgetown Presbyterian Church in Washington, D.C.—the congregation in which he was baptized and grew up. Before coming to the IRD, he taught high school English and Spanish in Florida. He received his B.A. in history, English, and Spanish from Rice University in Houston, Texas, in 1979. He then did two years of graduate work in history at Princeton University. In 1983 he received a second B.A., in education, from the University of Maryland.

Wisdom and his wife, Esther, live in Falls Church, Va., with their two children, Esther Lynne and Daniel.