Alfred B. Smith

Short Name: Alfred B. Smith
Full Name: Smith, Alfred B. (Alfred Barnerd)
Birth Year: 1916
Death Year: 2001
Pseudonym: B. C. Laurelton

Alfred B. Smith was an American gospel hymn writer, musician, and evangelist. He began playing on radio broadcasts in Jersey City, New Jersey, in 1930 on The Old Fashioned Gospel Hour. After meeting Wendell P. Loveless, he enrolled at the Moody Bible Institute in Chicago and joined the WMBI staff.

He served as Minister of Music at The Church of the Open Door in Philadelphia and taught at The Philadelphia School of the Bible in 1938. During that year, he wrote the hymn “For God So Loved the World” after visiting the ninety-four-year-old hymn writer George C. Stebbins.

Smith met Billy Graham at Wheaton College, and together with George Beverly Shea, he helped found Youth for Christ in Chicago and Singspiration in 1941. Over his lifetime, he composed more than 49 hymns and gospel songs (sometimes under the pseudonym B. C. Laurelton), including “A Pilgrim Was I, and a-Wand’ring”, “Once by the Sin of the World I Was Bound”, and “With Eternity’s Values in View, Lord”. His work was often devotional, evangelical, and accessible, aimed at both children and adults in congregational settings.

Smith’s contributions made a lasting impact on mid-20th-century American gospel music, and many of his hymns remain in use in Christian worship and evangelistic events.