Professor Lester Start Papers

Lester Start was a professor of philosophy and an ordained Baptist minister of the American Baptist Convention. The profession of philosophy predominated, but he was a supply minister in many churches, and served as interim pastor for a year at First Baptist Church of Kalamazoo, Michigan. He was born in Utica, New York in 1919. He graduated Valedictorian from Hamilton College in Clinton, New York and received his M.A. from Haverford College (Pendle Hill Scholar; now called Brinton Scholar, after Anna and Howard Brinton, co-directors in the ’40s of Pendle Hill Quaker study center). Dr. Start obtained his Bachelor of Divinity from Colgate-Rochester Divinity School, 1945, and was ordained a Baptist minister that year. His Ph.D. in philosophy came from Syracuse University in 1946 and he also studied at Columbia University and Union Theological Seminary. He taught philosophy at Utica college of Syracuse University from 1946 to 1958 and then chaired the Kalamazoo College Philosophy Department from 1958 to 1986. Dr. Start died in Kalamazoo, Michigan in 2001.

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