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4
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members, and peaked in 1926 with about 50,000.
10
Even in its first year, the executive
council was able to put together a council of representatives from every state in the union and
each province of Canada.
11
The state councils took up the call, and grass-roots local
movements were coordinated.
12
These fundamentalists were a force with which to reckon,
transcending convention boundaries and launching a vigorous campaign against
"modernism."
Their campaign was essentially a reactionary one. Attempts were made to
influence Baptist life at all levels. The visible leaders traveled far and wide, appearing before
or at the Northern, Southern, and Canadian conventions. Perhaps it was this reactionary
stance that eventually led to the BBUs faltering. Much energy was placed in opposition, with
less thought for direction. Robert Delnay, the movements biographer, analyzes the situation:
It is not greatly over-simplifying the issues to suggest that the fundamental reason [for
the BBUs collapse] was that from the beginning some of the leaders failed to grasp
the nature of their undertaking. The men who founded the movement in 1922 and
1923 were driven by their convictions to protest. . . . But its leaders could not agree as
to how far to carry their protest. With the perspective of hindsight, the movement was
inherently separatistic; but it is clear that few of the early leaders grasped this fact.
The problem was not so much the lack of an out-and-out separatist policy as a lack of
understanding.
13

The Demise of the BBU

The rapid decline of the BBU is truly amazing. In a matter of four years the
national organization, which numbered in the tens of thousands and maintained extensive
state and local networks, would reduce itself to a handful of faithful adherents--who would
quietly bury it.
How can such a change occur? Billy Vick Bartlett wrote:
10
Beale, 214.
11
"Information Concerning the Baptist Bible Union of North America with By-
laws and Aims and Confession of Faith. Booklet issued by the Baptist Bible Union of North
America (no date), 2. See also J. Murray Murdoch, Portrait of Obedience: The Biography of
Robert T. Ketcham (Schaumburg, IL: Regular Baptist Press, 1979), 98. There remains some
question in this writers mind as to whether there were truly organizations in every state and
province, or merely representative membership. Delnay discusses this in chapter eight.
12
Stewart G. Cole, The History of Fundamentalism (New York: Richard R.
Smith, Inc., 1931), 288-289. Cole is no friend of the movement, calling it an "experiment in
sectarianism."
13
Delnay, 188, 189 (also quoted by Murdoch).