L.S. Chafer on Fundamentalism

“The emergence in 1919 of the World Christian Fundamentalism Association (WCFA) provided the first agency for the coordination of efforts outside of traditional denominational boundaries to resist religious liberalism. However, the response of those organizing the college suggests that all was not received with congeniality, though the WCFA broadly embraced Bible conference distinctives. When the WCFA was launched in a flurry of euphuistic rhetoric by William Bell Riley, the Minnesota Baptist warrior, the secondary speakers at the convening conference included four later founders of the college; Chafer was the keynote speaker for the 1922 conference in Los Angeles, California, and several others served on various committees through the years. Part of the agenda of the WCFA was the creation of “A Great Evangelical, PREMILENIAL [sic: SEMINARY,” with several that later would be prominent in the college’s founding. Why Chafer did not seek to combine his dream with that of the WCFA is instructive; the evidence suggests that Chafer, and others, were increasingly discouraged by the Fundamentalist leadership of the WCFA. Writing to A.C. Gaebelein, a WCFA board member, Chafer stated, “The Fundamentalist Movement has been reduced to the influence of four men: Dr. Riley, Dr. Munhall, Tom Horton, and J. Frank Norris…. It certainly is a great embarrassment to the rest of us…”

In a later correspondence to Gaebelein, he wrote, “It would be too bad if the new school was linked in any way with Fundamentalism” and on another occasion he stated, “I believe the days of the Fundamentalism movement are gone.” Chafer made it clear to Robert Dick Wilson of Princeton Seminary that the college would be “quite independent of the Fundamentalist Movement.” To J. Oliver Buswell, Jr., the president of Wheaton College, he noted, “While we stand for all of the fundamentals of the Word of God, we are not identified with the Fundamentalist Movement as such. I have not been in sympathy with the movement from its beginning.”

Taken from a paper presented at this year’s ETS meeting by Dr. Hannah of DTS.