Fortifications and Forgeries

I.Fortifications and Forgeries A.The Inclusive Policy Adopted

1.Only five months following the Atlantic City conven­tion, the Northern Baptist Foreign Mission Society, on October 29, 1923, formally adopted the "inclusive policy" of amalgamating liberals and conservatives in mission work: "Our denomination, our Society, and our churches have always given to officers, missionaries, and pastors a considerable degree of liberty of theological opinion. .It has not been our Baptist custom to limit too explicitly the form in which these doctrines must be held and expressed. . . . The Board, composed like our churches of men and women of diverse opinions, has heretofore included and should include among its officers and missionaries representatives of various elements among our people." a)M.R. Hartley, a missionary who was home on furlough from Asia, reported to the NBC Foreign Board in 1924 that he no longer believed in Christ’s deity. b)The board voted nine to four to keep him on as a "sound man," which hardly seemed to conservatives like examining candidates "very carefully as to their belief regarding Christ and the Bible," as the convention president had claimed the boards were doing. c)When conservatives questioned this practice of inclusivism, the Foreign Board’s chairman, professor Frederick L. Anderson of Newton Theological Institution, ardently defended the inclusive policy as being "within the limits of the Gospel." d)Anderson undoubtedly believed in the Lord’s deity and even considered himself a Fundamentalist, having addressed the historic gather­ing in Buffalo that organized the Fundamentalist Fel­lowship in 1920. e)Anderson’s brand of Fundamentalism, however, was becoming more and more of a misnomer. f)Such moderate conservatives within the NBC, while con­sidering themselves Fundamentalists, were demonstrat­ing that when all was said and done their doctrinal militancy was simply not as strong as their zeal for spreading the gospel. g)At the annual 1924 NBC meeting in Milwaukee (May 28-June 3), W. B. Riley stood almost alone in an attempt to persuade the convention to adopt a good doctrinal statement, and he failed. h)Then John R. Straton was laughed down from the convention floor when he called for a full investigation of missionaries representing the Foreign Board and offered himself and Riley to serve on an investigating committee.