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The FBF traces its roots to the formation of the Fundamentalist Fellowship of Northern Baptists in 1920. A more militant segment of these early Fundamentalists formed the Baptist Bible Union in 1923, which in 1932 separated from the Northern Baptist Convention (NBC) and formed the General Association of Regular Baptist Churches. The Fundamentalist Fellowship men, however, stayed in the NBC and tried to reform it until the 1940s, when they were practically forced out. The issue that caused much of the conflict was the foreign mission society's adherence to the "inclusive policy," which meant that it approved liberal as well as evangelical missionaries. In 1943 the Fundamentalist Fellowship (FF) was instrumental in starting the Conservative Baptist Foreign Mission Society. In 1946 the FF changed its name to the Conservative Baptist Fellowship (CBF), and in 1951 by public resolution it disavowed any further relations with the American Baptist Convention (formerly the Northern Baptist Convention). In 1948 the CBF organized an association of churches, the Conservative Baptist Association of America, and two years later it helped bring into existence the Conservative Baptist Home Mission Society. In the Conservative Baptist movement, the CBF stood against the ecumenical evangelism, exemplified by Billy Graham, and New Evangelicalism and its compromise with liberalism. The beginning of the end of the CBF's involvement with Conservative Baptists occurred in 1961, when it helped to form a mission board that would appoint only premillennial missionaries, the World Conservative Baptist Mission (now Baptist World Mission). In 1967 the CBF felt compelled to break all ties with the Conservative Baptist movement it had founded. The Conservative Baptist Fellowship was finally completely independent. To distance itself from the Conservative Baptist movement, the CBF changed its name to the Fundamental Baptist Fellowship. Since that time it has continued and prospered as a loose fellowship of individual like-minded Baptists. FBF Presidents
1920-1926
Jasper C. Massee 1926-1928
Frank M. Goodchild 1928-1937
Earle V. Pierce 1937-1938
J. Whitcomb Brougher 1938-1944
Earle V. Pierce 1944-1948
Richard S. Beal 1948-1951
Richard V. Clearwaters 1951-1953
J. Palmer Muntz 1953-1954
William H. Murk 1954-1957
William H. Lee Spratt 1957-1960
Sam Bradford 1960-1964
Earle E. Matteson 1964-1977
G. Archer Weniger 1977-2003
Rod Bell 2003-present
John C. Vaughn
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