3
3
The Rise of the BBU
By 1922 conservatives had been attempting to change the direction of the
Northern Baptist Convention for several years. J. C. Massee was leading a pre-convention
conference of conservatives to try to influence the convention from within. The more militant
conservatives began to grow dissatisfied with Massees willingness to cooperate with the
opposition. They felt especially betrayed by his willingness to table the sale of The Baptist in
1920, the liberal magazine of the convention that was deeply in debt.
5
Then in 1921 Massee
failed to bring a confession proposed by conservatives to the floor of the convention, in the
interests of peace. GARBC leader Robert Ketcham would later remark, "The very first battle
we joined we would have won hands down if Massee hadnt thrown the switch under us, and
that became Massees pattern."
6
The growing unrest of the more militant fundamentalists caused some of them to
agitate for a new organization. Pastors R. E. Neighbour (Fist Baptist of Elyria, Ohio), O. W.
Van Osdel (Wealthy Street Baptist, Grand Rapids), and William L. Pettingill (North Baptist,
Wilmington, Deleware, and dean of Philadelphia College of the Bible) "cooperated to form
the Baptist Bible Union as a premillennial, separatist fellowship."
7
Later that year, J. Frank
Norris, pastor of the First Baptist Church of Fort Worth, and William Bell Riley, pastor of
First Baptist Church, Minneapolis were added to the executive committee, at the urging of
Neighbour.
8
Riley in turn invited T. T. Shields from Jarvis Street Baptist in Toronto to come
on board as president the next year (1923) . At this point it was necessary to revise the intent
of the group, because Riley was not a separatist, and Shields was not premillennial.
9
Norris,
Riley, and Shields would take the reins of leadership in the BBU, while some of the original
founders gradually left.
The charismatic style of leadership of the "big three" plus their geographical
diversity helped the BBU to experience meteoric growth. By 1925 the BBU grew to 30,000
5
David O. Beale, In Pursuit of Purity: American Fundamentalism Since 1850
(Greenville, SC: Unusual Publications, 1986), 196.
6
Robert George Delnay, A History of the Baptist Bible Union (Winston-Salem,
NC: Piedmont Bible College Press, 1974), 27-28; also cited by Beale.
7
Kevin Bauder, "Chronology of the Early Regular Baptist Movement"
(unpublished paper).
8
Delnay, 39. Ketcham writes that Neighbour conceived the idea, and that Norris,
Shields, and A. C. Dixon were present at the first meeting. He says that Riley became
prominent later (Ketcham, "RE: Baptist Bible Union," unpublished paper/letter, April 11,
1967.) Perhaps Ketcham was mistaken in his recollection many years later.
9
Ibid, 40-42.