6: History of the IFB Part 3 - Interview w/ Dr. Matthew Lyon on John R. Rice

This is the For Freedom Podcast. This podcast exists to bring to light the legalism and abuse in the independent fundamental Baptist movement and to encourage believers to grow in grace through the scriptures. Now, here's your host, John Holyfield. Welcome, everybody, to the For Freedom Podcast. I am your host, John Holyfield, and I'm excited about today's episode and our guest, Matthew Lyon, and he is joining us from Maryland. And Matthew is a pastor, but he's also, if I got this right, he's a PhD in Baptist history from Southern Seminary in Louisville. And Matthew, what's the name of your church? Tell us a little bit about yourself. Yeah, so I'm a pastor just outside of Baltimore. The name of the church, which we just changed last week because we moved our location, is Reese Road Baptist Church. So we're a suburb of Baltimore. I haven't passed it there about four years. And I just finished my PhD about a year ago. And my dissertation was actually on John R. Rice and fundamentalism. Awesome, awesome. And yeah, I just did two episodes. I'm going through, I'm doing an episode series. I'm going through the history of the independent fundamental Baptist movement. And I did two episodes on J. Frank Norris. And a lot of the information that I got about Norris was reading a couple of your papers and one dissertation that you had done there. Now, let me, you also do a podcast. You have your own podcast, correct? Yeah, so I was posting too much stuff on Facebook. So one of my elders at our church was like, let's do a podcast. And you kind of get more conversational and less provocative. So we do a podcast called History and Hope, where we look at history, theology, culture from a Baptist perspective. And it's really kind of a free form. Right now we're doing Baptist distinctives, but we'll throw in stuff on race and Calvinism. It's kind of whatever we're thinking about. Yeah. And just because of my personal interest, are you working on a book? Oh, yes, I am. So there's a small publishing company called H&E Publishing, which puts out a lot of Baptist work. So I got a contract with them to write a book on titled What is a Baptist? And it's geared at your average pastor or layperson who doesn't really need to be convinced so much as they just need to kind of understand. And I know I'm a Baptist, but what is a Baptist? So something to give to new members, something to give to pastors for like Sunday school class. So it's just sort of a descriptive and it's really going off the podcast format, what we're doing on the podcast. Awesome. And when I found your podcast, I think it was, you'd already been like 12 or 13 episodes or something like that. And I just listened to it. I was, because my background and I haven't really told my story on this podcast. I've done it on another one. And, you know, my background in fundamentalism, just sort of not a whole lot of honest education and whatever. I spent the last five years just reading this book, this book, this book. And then I found your podcast. I was like, yes, yes. That's what I've been learning the past five years. Finally, somebody saying this stuff that knows what they're talking about. Well, there's, there isn't even on, there's no really Baptist history podcast. There might be a few out there that are newer, but very few just dealing with Baptist history. And then even on fundamentalism, like one of the reasons you read my stuff is because there's not a lot of stuff out there on fundamentalism. There's a few books on J. Frank Norris, a couple books on Rice, but very little on in-depth look into fundamentalism. Yeah. And I think one of the best assessments was a book that you recommended me, but really is not a, it's not a take on fundamentalism. It's basically Baptist history. Leon McBeth's book on Baptist history was really, I found a lot of great material on, you know, the successionism stuff and the, just his, his assessment at the end of one of his chat, I think it's like deep in the book, like set page 700 something. And his assessment on fundamentalism I thought was absolutely phenomenal. And it was, it was written in like 87. Yeah. All right. So we're going to have something about fundamentalism. Yeah, go ahead. I'm sorry. Go ahead. Yeah. I was going to think about fundamentalism. It's not an isolate. It's connected to everything. It's connected to Baptist history. It's connected to Southern Baptist. So to understand it, you understand things around it too. Yeah. Yeah. So we're going to jump into this, this subject today of working through the history of the independent fundamental Baptist movement, understanding that at its beginning, it was not known as the independent fundamental Baptist movement, but there are ties. In the last episode, I showed the actual people in the IFB today that would hold that title. They claim J. Frank Norris as their forefather. And, and, and so to follow the linkage, which I don't even like that type of connection, but I mean, sometimes it, it does play a part in it. The next person that sort of bridges the gap between breaking off, I guess, I mean, the North was kicked out of the SBC and where you get in the eighties and nineties of the IFB is John R. Rice. Ask. I'm talking about asking and receiving, asking and receiving. Isn't it a marvelous thing that God wants you to pray? Oh, ask for whatever you want. In Philippians 4, 6, and 7, be not, be careful for nothing, but in everything but prayer and supplication with thanksgiving, let your request be made known to God. Everything. Everything. In Psalm 37, 4, and the scripture says, if you please the Lord, he said, ask what you will. Ask what you will. Mark 11, 24, wherefore I say unto you, what things for every desire when you pray? Believe she received them, you shall have them. In John 15, 7, if you abide in me and my words abide in you, you shall ask what you will. Oh, ask whatever you want then. Ask whatever you want. Oh, if you don't want the right thing, keep on asking. God will help you to get right and want the right thing. It's a marvelous thing that God encourages us to pray. Not only encourages us, He bribes us to pray. He begs us to pray. He commands us to pray. He punishes us if we do not pray. And I suspect sometimes He gives you an automobile accident and rams your head through a windshield to get you to pray. Or He lets a boy go wild and get on dope and get arrested so you'll pray. A poor, wild girl goes out and sins until a dad and mother learn to pray. God wants you to pray. Ask and it shall be given to you. Seek and ye shall find. Knock and it shall be opened unto you. For everyone that asketh receiveth. And he that seeketh findeth him that knocketh it shall be opened. Okay. So, Matthew, why don't you tell us a little bit about Rice's early life and how he becomes, you know, this evangelist. Yeah, so Rice and Norris grew up both in Texas. You probably know more than I do. I don't know where Norris grew up. Was it Central Texas, West Texas? He was raised in Alabama and then they moved to Central Texas and he was like eight or nine. Okay. So Rice grew up Central Texas, West Texas, which was a pretty rough frontier type of land. They would have regularly rode horses, raised cattle. So it developed a kind of rough and tumble spirit, which when the controversies came out in the 20s, melded together very well. The sort of fighting the enemy, sort of standing for truth, rugged individualism. So Rice grew up in a, I think his dad was a preacher in sort of a cow town, rode his horse to seminary, sold his horse to pay for college, played football. Just sort of this, it's hard for, he was born in, I think, 1899. So these are the early 20s. It's a long way from where we are in one sense. So he grew up as a devout Southern Baptist, went to Baylor, went to Southwestern, but he also went to the University of Chicago, which this would have been in the 20s, was one of the three main focal points for liberalism. So liberalism, it was Boston University, University of Chicago, and I think Crozier. These were where you went to learn liberal theology. So he went there to be a school teacher and maybe the president of the United States. That was his plan. And while he was there, he heard someone speak against evolution. They brought in a conservative to speak against evolution. I think it was William Jennings Bryan. And he was sort of converted to fundamentalism at that point when he realized that there were sides in the battle. And he was also working at the Pacific Garden Mission, where he was working with sailors, with the homeless, a lot of evangelism. And so he was converted in the sense of he wanted to be sort of a school teacher, sing, maybe politics. But seeing the fundamentalist battle up close and then working in evangelism at the mission turned him into an evangelist, a fundamentalist evangelist. And so he left the University of Chicago, went back to Texas and went to Southwestern to work on his master's degree, but became such a popular evangelist during that time that he also left Southwestern. And he's a Southern Baptist to the core at this point, much like J. Frank Norris was. Traveling around, preaching, singing. He was much, his personality was much different than Norris. Almost opposites. Everything I read about Norris makes me think that he was hard to be around. If you didn't agree with him. Everything I read about John R. Rice was the opposite. Like even the people that didn't like him still would say, well, yeah, I mean, I hate him, but he's a nice guy. In fact, his grandson wrote a book and his grandson is dabbled in like anarchy and communism, like hardcore out there. As far from fundamentalism as you can get. And he still was like, my dad was, my granddad was a great guy. I think he's totally wrong, but he's a great guy. So Rice had a, he had a very good reputation as a person. He was very kind to children. He was very respectful of people. He was gracious. I was listening to your other podcast where you mentioned where he and Norris had the, had the break. And even in that, John R. Rice was still nice to Norris. Even after he was, after Norris lied to him, he was always kind towards Norris, never sought to tear him down. So it was, it's interesting that, and I think that's where their, their belief system was the same. And I think that's what ties fundamentalism together. But Rice was actually, I think he was actually a Christian. Well, I don't know about Norris. And right, right. So he, so he's traveling around, he's, he's gaining a, he's gaining a sort of an audience in Texas traveling in the twenties and thirties. Then he comes into contact with Norris because their, their paths aligned. The lip, the fundamentalist modernist divide debate is happening. The seminaries are where the debate is happening. Baylor starts having some problems and they start teaching evolution at Baylor. So Rice starts speaking out against that. Well, Norris is doing the same thing. So they are, they're working together. I think Rice actually had an office at Norris's church. That's how close they were aligned. Sharing a pulpit. He would teach in their conferences. So working pretty close together. Then Rice goes and starts a church in Fort Worth. I think Fort Worth, Dallas, Dallas, Fort Worth somewhere. Oak Cliff, I think. And you can sense there's a little bit of pressure. So all these churches. So, so J Frank Norris, he's like the first one to, to be independent. And other people start following him and starting churches. And they all called them sort of the fundamentalist Baptist church. Rice does the same thing. He starts a church called fundamentalist Baptist church, but he later, he changes the, changes the name to a Galilean Baptist. And you can sense that Rice is trying to do evangelism and fight heresy. J Frank Norris is trying to build an empire. And in order to build an empire, you have to have people who do what you say. And Rice, yeah, go ahead. Just a question. Okay. So Norris is, the shooting incident happened somewhere around between 25, 1925. What time is this that they're sort of working together? Is this before or after? So, let me see if I can get my dates right. John R. Rice graduated, I think he graduated from college and seminary in the mid-20s. Mm-hmm. So, he would have been in his 20s at that time. Okay. So, he would have been young. So, not very influential. Norris was much more established than Rice. I think Norris was older. So, this probably would have been after the whole murder trial, all of that stuff. Yes. This would have been in the 30s. Okay. Yeah. So, at this point, Norris is out of the Southern Baptist Convention. Right. He's out. There's no going back. He's now taking a stand against the Southern Baptists. And Rice is still in the convention and leaves at about this time. So, and he's naturally drawn to Norris because Norris has already taken a stand and is already sort of identified as a fundamentalist standing for what's right against the sort of denominational control. So, when Rice gets forced out, and basically what happened to Rice was they set him down and said, we're trying to raise money for the cooperative campaign, for the cooperative program, and you're going around criticizing our schools. It's making it hard to raise money. You're working with J. You're working with J. Frank Norris. Nobody likes him. So, if you want to stay a Southern Baptist, you need to separate from Norris and this style of fundamentalism. And they said, or you'll be blacklisted. And he didn't like getting told what to do. And Rice was like, look, I get along with everybody, but I will not be told what to do. And I think that's actually one of the redeeming qualities about Rice. He didn't look for problems. He didn't ever try to cause problems, but he refused to be pressured into conforming to what somebody else wanted. And so, he just said, okay, fine, I'll do what I have to do. And, of course, an individual can't leave the Southern Baptist Convention. You don't join as an individual. You can't leave as an individual. But he basically, because he still took meetings at Southern Baptist churches. But he broke ties with them, essentially. So, he's now gained a pretty good reputation. He was very intelligent. He was very well-spoken. He was very – he didn't complete his master's degree, but he was probably one of the smartest people in fundamentalism and able to articulate things very well. So, he's gaining a pretty popular audience. And, plus, people liked him. And so, that helped, especially when you had people like J. Frank Norris. So, that was how he began. And, as his fame grew, he started being asked other places. And, he just sort of just gradually grew step by step. So, in 1934, he's still in Texas, planted the church in Dallas. He starts with the Sword of the Lord. Okay. And, the way you can think about papers back then would be the way you can think about blogs and podcasts today. Right. It wasn't a really big deal to start a paper. I mean, if you had the material and the equipment – for us today, we think of starting a newspaper. It's like, wow, you must be sort of an established person who's a big deal. But, they would – you know, people would look at podcasts the same way. So, he started a newspaper to basically promote his ministry in Dallas. But, starting a paper was the medium that you – he would have done to try to get his message out, correct? Right. So, that was sort of – the Southern Baptist had newspapers. Every state had a newspaper. Norris had one. Norris had his newspaper. So, it was just the way that you would, like you said, get your message out. Yeah. In a day when there was no internet or anything. So, he starts that in 1934. And, in the beginning, his daughters just went door-to-door handing it out in Dallas. So, it wasn't – it would be like maybe like a live stream. Like, you know how churches will live stream their services. It would be similar to that concept. So, he starts that in 1934. And, at this time, because fundamentalism is so new, people are looking for something. And so, Rice steps in and provides them with written material with sort of an – it's hard for us so many years later, 100 years later. Everyone was a part of associations. Everyone was a part of a denomination. If you weren't part of it, you were sort of that rural church who was kind of weird maybe and did your own thing. But, every regular Baptist was a part of the Southern Baptist Convention, the American Baptist Association. Everyone was a part of something. So, when Rice and Norris leave the convention, it's new. It's a new kind of thing. And so, what they're doing is they're providing a structure in place of a denomination. Because everybody was used to a denomination. So, the news – so, the sword of the Lord became so popular because it provided a focal point. Instead of the Southern Baptist Convention, you now have the sword of the Lord paper or the sword of the Lord conference. Okay. So, we today, when we think of fundamentalism, we think of it surrounding conferences, colleges, papers. But that was what developed out of this independent movement. Okay. So, the last episode, I talked about the Norris-Rice split from Norris' perspective. How does this sort of come about? I mean, we just – you just mentioned that Rice didn't like getting told what to do. So, give sort of that aspect with Rice with what was happening there with Norris. Right. So, fundamentalist – so, independent Baptist fundamentalism starts in Texas, essentially. There were other independent Baptists, other fundamentalists in the North, but they're separate – GRBC, things like that. So, Texas is the focal point, and it spreads from there. It starts gaining traction. And part of that reason is Southerners were moving North. So, when Norris goes to Detroit to pastor the church there, he doesn't go to a Northern church. He goes to a Southern church that was transplanted. So, Southerners are moving North for work. When they get there, they want a church. So, they kind of gather together, and Norris is their Southern connection. This happened in California, too. California was a huge place for fundamentalism, not because West Coast people wanted fundamentalism, but because people from the South moved out there. That's why Billy Graham got a big start out in California. So, as Rice is moving North with the fundamentalist spread, Norris already has a head start. He's already got a church in the North, and he wants to control that growth. Rice just wants to reach people. He just wants to – I'm sure there was ambition involved. And so, he starts setting up meetings. He starts going places without really coordinating with J. Frank Norris. And J. Frank Norris notices that he's becoming maybe more popular in some places. And so, he tries to rein him in and tries to control him. And Rice's motto was, we're equals, doing the same mission. And so, we'll work together because we're doing the same thing. But at no point did Rice ever feel like he was being controlled or governed by Norris. And so, Rice would have been happy to continue to work with Norris, which is a problem in itself, as long as Norris treated him like an equal. Right. Just sort of let him do his thing. It was when Norris started to try to dictate where Rice was going to have meetings, how he was going to have the meetings, that Rice said, I don't want to fight, but I'm not taking orders. And so, Norris, as he did repeatedly, just sort of put the pressure on, started pressuring his friends, then basically just openly lied about Rice. And I think the New York meeting, I think Bingham to New York, he told the pastor up there that Rice believes in healing, basically said that Rice was a Pentecostal, which Norris knew that was a lie. Because Rice had already printed materials on it. And that was the breaking point, because Rice said, no matter how hard I try, if you're going to lie about me, we can't work together. But it's just not going to work. So Rice was, you can almost just think of Rice just doing his own thing and working with whoever would work with him. He would work with Assemblies of God. He would work with Presbyterians. He would work with Pentecostals. He would work with anybody who believed the fundamentals. And he would say, I'll work with any Pentecostal. We just agree that there's no speaking in tongues during the meeting. So Rice was very broad. And he would work with Norris. And he would work with Billy Graham. And he would work with Bob Jones. And he would work with W.A. Criswell, the Southern Baptist. He would work with anybody. And what he wouldn't do is be told how to minister. And that's where you see that independence. Right. He was very independent. And in some ways that worked out well. I think that's what happened with Norris. In other ways, it was not as much of a virtue. So is Rice, okay, so does Rice's ministry take a hit after the split with Norris? Or does it grow? It grew. Yeah. The more people got to know Norris, the less they liked him. And so splitting with Norris, I'm sure there were problems. But I'm guessing that everybody who knew about it thought Rice was more likely to be right than wrong. Yeah. And Rice, he was more of a careful thinker. He wasn't as much of a showman as Norris was. Which means he could have an influence outside of his meetings. So Norris would draw people to hear him preach. Because he was just loud and entertaining and crazy. But outside of that, he didn't have as much of an influence. Rice, on the other hand, could write. And then he could send his materials out. And so Rice, I think he has something like 250 books printed. Which means you are learning from Rice without ever meeting him. And so his ministry is growing in that sense. Drawing people who are less about the entertainment and more about the information. So no, his ministry continues to grow. Plus he made friends and Norris made enemies. Yeah. Regularly. Yeah. So Rice grows. He moves from Texas, right? Yeah, he moves to Wheaton. Wheaton College was sort of a central location for fundamentalism. Okay. Is it this time that he starts to work with Billy Graham? Let's see. No, that would have been later. So he moves to Wheaton because he wants his daughters to go to college there. It's funny when we talk about Wheaton now. Yeah. Wheaton now is not a fundamentalist college. But back then it was. And it was more of a central location. It was a better place to get meetings and reach people. He has some problems there. He's so independent. He can't work with anybody. Even local churches. It's not a real prominent part of his ministry. But if you look, if you dig a little bit, you can see the conflicts. Okay. strategic moves and he spent the rest of his time in in murfreesboro right that's i spent i work in murfreesboro so that's my backyard okay yeah drive up and down john r rice boulevard regularly they have a road name after him yeah so that yeah that's the building he worked in um yeah okay so tell the story between of of rice and graham yeah so billy graham obviously was a very gifted person and so he was going to succeed no matter where he went but he grew up in north carolina and if you're a conservative in north carolina you're a fundamentalist back in the 40s 30s 40s so he's drawn to the the conservative fundamentalist evangelistic crowd which would have been everybody there weren't really camps back then like there are now so it's just kind of a big movement and so he starts preaching and john r rice made a point to promote evangelists young evangelists when he came across evangelists who had potential he would use the sword of the lord to promote him which would get him meetings rice's goal over everything was evangelism that was his driving force so he would use the sword of the lord to connect young evangelists to churches and so when right when he comes across billy graham i mean if you just listen to young billy graham you can just there's a there's a quality there that just draws people right and he recognized this this young evangelist is going to be somebody let me help him so he begins to promote him in the sword of the lord and he sends him to bob jones university or bob jones college i guess at this time so billy graham goes to bob jones uh under bob jones senior i believe this would have been the 40s um that didn't work out billy graham was a little bit too normal to fit in under bob jones and so he gets in trouble which i'm sure it was i can't imagine how minor the problem was goes to bob jones's office so bob jones senior who is one of the most prominent evangelists in america uh methodist evangelist national traveling has his own school he says to billy graham you'll never amount to anything if you leave here one of the worst prophecies ever given uh and billy graham i think billy graham said to himself i'd rather amount to nothing than stay here another semester so billy graham leaves and goes down to a college in florida and gets his degree there and rice the whole time is like i don't know about all that stuff but this guy can preach so rice is the one who began billy graham's career he's the one who connects him with churches he's the one who promoted him he's the one who got him his ministry to start with and sort of mentored billy graham and we know billy graham later i think the first time he really comes to a national sense is when he goes to california in 49 i think and gets national attention but he already had years of working with with uh john r rice in the fundamentalist circles and billy graham was a fundamentalist but as his ministry grew he wasn't as interested in fundamentalism as he was in evangelism right which rice was fine with because rice was all about evangelism and rice continues to work through him to the 50s in the 50s you start to see a clash between conservative evangelicals and fundamentalist evangelicals and billy graham wasn't really about the fundamentalist life he just wanted to travel and go to scotland and england and preach the gospel and have a huge ministry and rice was was with him the whole time bob jones sees this sort of what they would call compromising and most fundamentalists abandoned billy graham in the mid 50s john r rice doesn't do you think however though that maybe there might be a little bit of chip on the shoulder of bob jones with this right knowing the jones family yes well i i don't have any historical records yeah right okay i have some i mean even today well i don't know about today but as recently as about 10 years ago i mean i have some church members here at our at the church i pastor at and they they tell me they have family members that went to bob jones and they have a notebook of what's wrong with billy graham i mean he yeah he became a sour taste in that place's mouth yeah i don't know if it was a chip on the shoulder as much as a and he was the epitome of what bob jones was against so they would say we knew this from the beginning he got kicked out of bob jones for a reason and he just continued down that path of being the epitome of the compromising evangelical yeah so they hate they hate billy graham more than a sort of liberal because they they think billy graham betrayed fundamentalism and that he's sort of a double agent and so he's more dangerous than an open liberal um and so bob jones they always had it out for people like that you know especially in the 50s so um but but rice sticks with billy graham to the point where rice almost begins to look like kind of foolish defending graham because graham was leaving fundamentalism but he was kind of telling rice two stories kind of shielding rice to keep his support i think and rice was a little bit naive and trusting and but he was the last one to split with billy graham um ever fundamentalism and all left billy graham behind but rice was the last one and it was because he saw how many people were coming to the meetings and he just thought rice was willing to overlook a lot of stuff if you were having evangelistic meetings yeah which which a lot maybe sort of proof of the pudding with what happens towards the end of his life with some of the people that he platformed in the late 70s yeah so it's funny like how does someone who can get along with billy graham when nobody else can in fundamentalism also work with jack hiles yeah and jerry falwell who seemed to be the opposite of billy graham yeah and it's because rice was willing to put up with just about anybody who held to the basic fundamentals and was an evangelist yeah but and i'm i struggle i'm not a historian yeah but i know as an historian you you you focus on looking at the facts and try your best to stay away from giving necessarily your opinion i find that a lot with your writing but at the same time i can't help my sort of filter coming through here of um you know i just lost what i was gonna say uh but um well let's let's let's continue on so well we never really got to i think this the split with billy graham yeah so billy graham so at this time you've got what's called like the um the evangelical movement is beginning so prior to the 50s you just had two groups you had the liberals and the non-liberals liberals and fundamentalists that was it you either believed everything the bible said was true or you use modern methods to sort of undermine it those were the two camps and obviously very large camps well then you start seeing two kinds of evangelicals two kinds of fundamentalist there's the kind that we now call fundamentalist and then there's the kind that we now call even evangelicals and so the fundamentalists were very careful about working with liberals very careful about keeping separation between uh true doctrine and false doctrine and what became to be called the neo-evangelicals they're called neo-evangelicals because everybody was called evangelical they're called neo-evangelicals because they're a new kind that says we don't want to be like fundamentalists where we won't work with anybody we want to work with people we want to get out there we don't want such a high bar of separation and so they begin to split and billy graham is the most popular evangelist at the time and he's sort of on the middle of these two groups so rice is kind of in the middle but more on the fundamentalist side billy graham's in the middle but more on the neo-evangelical side so they're the two closest to each other but on different sort of sides of the fence and but as the pressure mounts the neo-evangelicals would work with liberals they would go to conferences with them in a way that current evangelicals wouldn't neo-evangelical is and i hear this throwing around all the time that's an old word that doesn't mean much anymore like if you hear someone call somebody a neo-evangelical today it's a it's a sign that they don't know the history they don't really know what they're talking about uh because neo-evangelicals kind of disappeared or got called something else so so when you think of an evangelical today someone like a john piper mark dever john mcarthur a um i don't know name the sort of conservative evangelical you wouldn't see them having a preaching conference with a liberal i'm talking about theological liberals obviously not political or anything but someone who would deny the inerrancy of scripture or the virgin birth or the resurrection you're not going to see don carson hosting a meeting with those guys just sort of sharing the platform but the new evangelicals did do that and so billy graham and the breaking point point is really the 1957 new york campaign where he had neo-liberals on the platform with them basically promoting what would be what we would call either heresy or certainly heterodox because that's what neo-orthodox people that's what neo-evangelicals did they'd work with anybody catholics liberals anybody rice couldn't go that far and so that's where the split comes he said i'll work with anybody but i can't work with someone who promotes liberals and honestly i think i may not put a lot of opinions in my paper but i i'm not a fundamentalist not anymore right yeah but i think he was right like i think at that time he was right i think rice was right and billy graham was wrong if you are a conservative not a fundamental it's just a historic conservative you believe what christians have believed for a thousand two thousand years and you have somebody come up in your meeting who doesn't believe core doctrines of the faith and pray i don't think that's i don't think that's right i think that's promoting false doctrine right because there's some level of endorsement there yeah yeah the people in the crowd think well if this guy can pray and we do it today you know how it is when a guest preacher comes to a church and the pastor hasn't come up and pray it's an endorsement yeah and there's nothing wrong with that but when you have someone who denies fundamental doctrine pray at your meeting you're endorsing their theology to a degree you're saying it's safe and as christians as bible believing christians it's not safe doctrine it's dangerous and so john r rice was right to break with billy graham and and evangelicals today realize that they look back at that time and they realize it was wrong the tim kellers the matt chandlers the mark devers all these guys look back at that period of history in the 50s 60s 70s and say that was a mistake we gain nothing from that we just watered down the gospel and so rice knew that at the time so that was one of the the the good things that rice did you know he never spoke against billy graham after that yeah he he was he was always friendly he was never trying to tear billy graham down because he believed in the message yeah and even today when we talk of say we those that would consider themselves conservative evangelicals talk of billy graham we are we i mean we should we show respect towards him and we show you know hey whether we have so we we draw the line here or there with maybe the altar call situation or uh who he was shaking hands or platforming right it's hard to deny that god used the man yeah and rice would say he says that's why i support billy graham because billy graham preaches the gospel he never he would have supported billy graham as long as billy graham did not platform liberals um he was rice was very open to all sorts of associations as long as they weren't denying the faith and so he was always positive towards billy graham yeah well uh i am going to skip this i had written down the i wanted to cover one section but we're going to skip over that there's a uh interesting part of of rice's life where he actually has a controversy with lewisbury schaefer over a book that schaefer wrote if you're interested in in knowing that story uh the book one and hope and doctrine that i've referenced before really details that that uh controversy which is quite interesting to see how rice is is really one of the only instances i think that rice really uh is on the the attack card almost and uh but i want i want to move towards the um because i want to talk about rice's theology well barely touched that but i mean some racism issues as well um but right now let's let's go to his split with bob jones jr and you know that it's pretty much right towards the end of his life yeah so this has been the 70s um he'd always worked closely with bob jones senior and then bob jones jr replaced his dad after he died in the 50s i think so it was bob jones jr that split with billy graham um so rice like i said he worked with anybody but bob jones began to be more even more conservative bob jones jr and i think the third but especially bob jones jr began to call themselves hyper fundamentalist they were primarily concerned with preserving the separation between true doctrine and false doctrine to the point where they said we not only separate from false stock from false teachers like liberals but if you support them we'll separate from them too so this is the thing about billy graham rice never split with billy graham he only split with billy graham's ministry okay and if billy graham had ever invited rice to a meeting without liberals there i think rice would have gone oh he never split with billy graham because billy graham never denied the faith and so rice never had a reason to split okay he only could he only said i can't work with the ministry that platforms liberals and that's a big distinction that rice had that a lot that bob jones did not have yeah bob jones said billy graham's he's so far out there he's the most dangerous and i think they said he's the most dangerous man in america because he's he believes the right thing but he works with liberals therefore he is the problem rice never said that graham was the problem and the thing was that there were some hard feelings there some some underhanded stuff so they never worked together but i think if rice died in 80 i think if in 79 billy graham had invited him to an all conservative meeting rice would have gone really yes yeah he never he never broke with billy graham because billy graham wasn't a heretic he wasn't a liberal he just stopped working with him because billy graham decided to work with with neo-event or neo-orthodox liberals bob jones on the other hand says billy graham's he is the most dangerous person because he works with liberals so therefore if you work with billy graham you're part of the problem too so we can't work with anybody who works with billy graham because so the southern bavis convention which harbored some liberalism was out of the picture and john arise did not have that vision so he worked with w.a criswell who was a prominent southern baptist would speak together but there came a breaking point and bob jones jr really became more hard line during the 50s so there was a time when when bob jones jr following more of his father and more of rice would have had someone like w.a criswell at a meeting after this though and especially in the 70s 60s 70s they start making a line where if there's a southern baptist we can't support it that's tearing a christian and so it came to the point where they started attacking rice because and even though they were close friends rice was working with anybody he was working with the southern baptist he was having chris willette and so now rice becomes part of the problem and there were some other things going on there's always more than one reason but the main thing was bob jones was a there's no limit to the amount of separation they practice second third fourth fifth degree whatever they can trace out and rice only separated from liberals that's it he would not work with liberals he'd work with any bible believing christian and so bob jones he became they just they labeled him basically as a sympathizer as a is complicit in liberalism and and rice was like i'm not taking this hard line stance with you we're done and so he so he splits in the same way that he split from j frank norris because he wasn't willing to be a hyper fundamentalist which is what bob jones called themselves yeah they were sort of doing the same thing giving him an ultimatum right right yeah yeah so this i think was 72 it was break ties with southern baptists and those like them or break ties with us and rice was like i'm not breaking ties with anybody but that's what you want to do go for it like if you want to uninvite me that's fine and bob jones it's funny because in a lot of ways people think bob jones is more is less conservative is less fundamentalist than somewhere like a hiles anderson or pensacola but in other ways they're more they were more fundamentalist oh yeah just not on issues of not the superficial issues like dress standards and music versions and you know after that they sort of end up like like like like we can do sometimes i mean this is sort of i think we all can do this whenever we we break with something but they start nitpicking everything because i i think i read in part of my research i read nathan finn's paper on yeah the you know they just went after nitpicking his his view of of inspiration i think it was yeah the mechanical dictation yeah yeah yeah rice was he wasn't real clear on what he believed there and they jumped on it and it was a very sort of let us show you another reason john rice is part of the problem okay well with that why don't we that that makes a good segue into sort of what uh john r rice sort of believe because you wrote most of your dissertation was on his theology yeah and so talk a little bit about sort of his view of theology and things i know this probably could have been a whole hour episode but then sort of transition that into i guess probably the glaring flaw that i see with him was was the racism yeah yeah so uh as i was studying his theology so the thesis of my my work is evangelism was rice's core conviction that helped him navigate all other aspects of his faith um but but the the the foundation of his theology and i believe this is true of all fundamentalism is authority i think this is the key to fundamentalism is the issue of authority the the the concept of authority so what are the what are fundamentalists most known for i think it would be the authority of scripture the inerrancy of scripture and i think i personally agree with most fundamentalists on how they view scripture as inerrant authoritative god's word um the only authoritative and final rule of faith for all of us so but you can see how that's based on a concept of authority so that's why it's so prominent so when you i think when you look at fundamentalism there are common points of theology with traditional christianity the resurrection the word of god but what makes fundamentalism is this this obsession or obsession is not the right word this focus on authority as the way you do theology so so so the issue of authority is the lens through which you view everything and in one sense that make that that doesn't sound bad god's authority the bible's authority the um necessity of of repenting of your sins and believing in jesus you see this all sounds like just regular christianity traditional christianity um and i think that's why fundamentalist is so can is so easily called traditional christianity because it sounds like what people were saying a thousand years ago the bible is true that you must repent of your sins and believe in jesus and so fundamentalism is designed to um unpack the idea of authority from scripture the problem with that and this is where rice fails is that that's not the defining principle in scripture authority is not the defining principle in scripture it is a part of scripture certainly but the defining principle in scripture for especially the new testament is love that's the core of theology for god so loved the world they will know you by your love one for another jesus says here's the two great commandments love god love your neighbor if any man says he loves god but doesn't love his brother he's a liar so there's the core of theology that fundamentalism misses it's not even that they're wrong it's that they are looking through the wrong lens so they get some things right they get the authority of scripture right they get the trinity right they get the resurrection right because all those things work well with a with a authority power mentality but what they get wrong is love so this is where fundamentalism goes wrong john r rice tried to navigate the two practically so he would have been described as a loving person i think but his theology was authority and so evangelism was more about about saving people from their rebellion and getting them right with god right there's a power above you god is the power we must save people from negative power which is part of the bible but it misses the whole point of god loves you god loved you enough to die for you and so when you read rice's stuff you see hints of that but it's it's it's mostly about authority and i think when you look at fundamentalism there's the problem it's not that they believe the bible is true it's not even so i believe that i in um i don't want to call it complementarianism because a lot of people i don't agree with but the basic principle that the elder the pastor of the church should be a man right okay so so fundamentalists believe that too but they believe it in a different way in a different system why are there so many fundamentalists who are abusive because their theology is about power it's about control it's about authority yeah you mix a a theology of a power of power and control with a bad person and you get corruption you get oppressive systems and i'll even go as far as to say this my wife asked me recently she said do you think every fundamentalist pastor is abusive because her pastor that she grew up with was a very nice person he would never he was never harsh to anybody he was never um physically emotionally abusive and i said are they teaching fundamentalism their theology is abusive they may not be abusive there are many many many independent fundamental baptists who are kind who are gracious who are loving who are caring but the theology they're teaching is all about power it's not about love and that can't sustain anything it just it collapses in on itself god's system is not based on power it's based on love so when fundamentalism creates a system based on hierarchy authority power it just creates a haven for abuse of that power right and so true christianity is built on love so so this goes into rice he believed that authority was at the core so when you come to racism and the civil rights movement specifically so what is drice most concerned about it's about respect for authority respect for god's authority respect for god's appointed authority and so what he sees with the civil what he sees in america is that there's a there's a law and order structure so he grew up in the 20s right in the middle of jim crow his dad was a member of the ku klux klan really yes okay i didn't know that fact yeah so he's deep in he's deep in it he opposes the clan unlike j frank norris who supported the clan but the reason john r rice opposed the ku klux klan was because they were breaking the law they were going out at night they were beating people up they were wearing masks they were causing chaos he wasn't against the clan because they were racist he was against them because they went outside the law so so it's all back to this law and order respect authority god's authority first which i think all christians would agree with that but then also god's appointed authority so the government and if the government says that segregation is the way things are we need to support that that's that was rice's mentality he didn't agree with segregation he didn't think it was the best thing to do but he didn't want to tear it down either because it would cause too much chaos right so he opposed segregation as long as everybody could do it quietly and peacefully he opposed lynching because it was extra judicious uh judicial but he made excuses for people who lynched because he said well what do you expect when all of these black people are out there terrorizing our women is what he said he said a white woman can't walk down the street at night without being feared for her life because of black people and then so then he goes on to say so what do you expect when some men take the law into their own hands which is a defense for lynching yeah but his reason against lynching was because it broke the law it wasn't because he loved anybody it wasn't because people were made in god's image civil rights shows up he's against the civil rights movement because what is the civil rights movement it's breaking the law it's protest it's going and marching in the streets and he said no bible believing christian would ever disrespect the authority like that so john so emmett till who was horribly killed lynched brought it on himself he said he said emmett till was killed because northern agitators have created an environment where people just do whatever they want and what do you expect when when you disregard authority this is what happens so the civil rights movement was not actually in his view promoting equality it was destroying things because it was disrespecting authority so his racism was not because he thought the bible taught that people should be that one person was better than the other it was because everything was built on law and order and king was not about law and order he was about justice he was about equality and so that meant going out in the street and marching peacefully to bring attention to it king martin luther king would say that's what you do rice said no you're causing agitation and that's unbiblical that's sinful the whole point of the gospel is to get rid of law breaking and now and now we got these civil rights protesters out here breaking the law yeah so he he opposed it so it's it's deeper than just him being a racist it's a theology that supports unjust government unjust cultures unjust systems which in a case i mean the way you just explained that really it helped my mind so much sort of tie together basically the culture that we have today i mean influence let me say it this way the culture we have today in baptist churches in the south because when you have decades of that kind of preaching coming down i mean you get to today and of course there's justification for you know a police officer doing whatever he wants to to somebody just to restrain them and um yeah rice spoke but some of the stuff that rice said sounds like he was talking about today he said in 1965 he said there's no policeman out there who ever stops anybody because they're racist they're just trying to maintain order and so if people would not basically if people wouldn't break the law the police wouldn't bother them now site 1965 is interesting because that's that's the selma riot or the selma march we know pictures where we see the police hitting people with batons turn the water hoses on that that really famous march that same year he says basically there's no bad police they're all good because they're all trying to maintain order and if they've got to beat people to do so well he should have obeyed them so it's not that he necessarily supports the abuse he justifies it by saying law and order is the most important thing if you don't want to get beat up by the police just comply because that's 1965 nothing's changed the theology is still there the justification for police brutality is still there it's law and order above everything which overflows sort of in the in the context of of my focus in the podcast and sort of what i've been doing my counseling training in is is abuse within the church sort of comes from the same idea of the authority of the quote-unquote man of god you know that that's sort of my idea that i'm working on as part of the i'm doing a chapter in the book that i'm writing on pastoral a friend gave me the idea you know they call it pastoral authority i'm going to call it pastoral superiority which is basically you you know and that is to me the number one factor that is the open door to abuse yeah it's law and order it's it's the authority that god has given cannot be violated even if things are wrong the primary thing we have to do is keep god's authority intact which if it means sweeping things under the rug to protect the man of god you do it yeah rice never spoke out against any of this stuff how is it that j frank norris has a hundred complaints as wb riley said yeah and rice didn't ever speak a word about it i don't think rice has zero scandals in his life sexual financial he never had a a single problem in his ministry but he was around a lot of people who did yeah and he never said a word because in his mind he didn't support what's happening but he didn't want to undermine the authority of god by criticizing the man of god yeah which just provides cover and okay so that sort of brings me back you remember when i said i forgot what i was gonna say yeah i remembered it and that was the idea of okay so you say rice's framework and his theology and sort of his ability to excuse a lot of things was evangelism first evangelism first but was it really evangelism or i don't know if i can even ask this question uh or was it just the the facade of evangelism i mean it did he it was it was it just the numbers was it just the mega the mega you know the the big events you know if this guy has this many you know i mean you think about norris yeah we mean you both sort of said norris didn't get along with anybody but rice put up with him because of the results so if you're talking about rice specifically i think rice had good intentions okay now i'm not talking about fundamentalism just john r rice john r rice seemed to be a well-intentioned person who was trying to do the right thing and he was not trying to manipulate anybody he wasn't trying to promote himself any more than anyone else any one of us are doing yeah but i think he was working within a system that if you weren't as morally sound as john r rice you easily slid into that very quickly so rice was a very his moral character is very high right and this comes from everybody friends enemies family um i studied under his son-in-law at tennessee temple um his moral character was very high but not everybody else's was so while rice may not have manipulated people into decisions he was using the same tactics that other people could manipulate um so it's not so much that he was doing the right thing it's more that his moral character kept him from using those tactics in the wrong way but the tactics themselves were manipulative yeah so so the system he was using was corrupt he wasn't corrupt um i think man that is so contradictory isn't it not so i think the proof's in the pudding i'm not denying what you're saying i'm just saying right how does how does how does he you know how does somebody do live their life like that because they believe that god said so and if god said it it doesn't matter what anything else doesn't matter so the authority structure yeah when you have a very black and white straightforward view of scripture where if the bible says that i believe it but you're really shaped by american christianity um you just sort of deceive yourself i think and you're deceived by your culture but what you produce is you produce a j frank norris you produce a jack hiles you produce a jack scott um you produce a lot of abusive people who don't have as much moral character as you to prevent that and and rice was abusive he wasn't physically abusive i don't think he was verbally abusive but he was very controlling um and then he perpetuated abuse in other people's ministries by by platforming them by supporting them so it's it's the contradiction of john r rice which is why he's so popular because he was such a moral person but he planted the seeds of everything bad that followed him and he put up with j frank norris so he's complicit at best okay so this i know we've gone a little long but uh this is the last thing i want to close up this way how do we now from your perspective matthew you're a historian um you know you like i said earlier historians a lot of times focus on the facts you know and try to and that's that's i think one of the things we respect about historians is they they try to you know deviate from opinions but how do we look at these figures in history where they may have some things commendable about them but there's just like you know and from our from our viewpoint it's like how could you you do that i mean i i think of you know guys like luther who was very anti-semitic and um i mean even i think you even said this you guys just covered the lord's supper on your podcast right yeah and you told the story about how he you know got in his wingly's face and basically said you know if you don't agree exactly with me on this thing you're not even a brother in christ yeah how do we look at these guys and then you know we can yeah god used them but yeah what's how do we view that yeah so part of it so you begin with the knowledge the bible teaches us that everyone's flawed and everyone agrees on that but what's happened practically is you're only here one side of the story there's the problem okay so let's take the the original example of good and bad in the in the new testament peter every christian on earth knows that peter is great and terrible at the same time right no one's saying peter's the best i mean he rebukes christ to his face christ says get behind me satan he then he goes and leads the greatest revival that we can see in the new testament with pentecost then he has paul rebuke him to his face months or years later and you're just like okay well that's just people right sometimes they do great things and we we follow them sometimes they do terrible things and we just recognize that no one's perfect what happens though is we don't do that later so luther's an interesting example because if you go to a um just a regular seminary like uh like just an evangelical seminary and you ask people about luther they're gonna be like yeah he was great but he was anti-semitic and they're gonna have that same view of this like well read his works on justification avoid his stuff on on on jewish people he's great in some areas he's terrible in others but when you get some other characters you only ever hear the good stuff in their life okay so let's talk about um let's say i mean it's hard not to get political with historical figures thomas jefferson okay okay if you're raised and all you ever hear about thomas jefferson is that he wrote the declaration of independence and he was a genius and he started the university of virginia and he built monticello and this and that you're gonna think this is a great man but you know what else he did he also raped his slaves he also had slaves he he defended slavery he protected it just like peter who was both a follower of christ and christ calls him satan what happens with what what our problem is is when we only hear one side of the story for so long you can't just then add in the bad stuff and go on once someone's been built up and this is where there's a lot of controversy in america right now about our historical figures jonathan edwards if you're if you're on twitter if you follow these people there's a lot of people saying we should you know cancel jonathan edwards and everyone's like oh you can't just cancel people you can cancel the terrible word no one should cancel anybody but what they're saying is we should disregard jonathan edwards we don't even know if he was a christian look at all the good stuff he did here's the problem for we've already heard the good stuff for a couple hundred years you can't just one day say oh he also did some bad stuff let's continue on you've got to take some time years even to reevaluate these people take them off the pedestal put them down on the bottom shelf elevate some other people because we have a bad perspective on them this is what fundamentalists don't want to do with their leaders they don't want to have any um chance that they're going to be taken off the leadership pedestal if you take down lee robertson john r rice j frank norris what do you have who do you have in fundamentalism if you get rid of jonathan edwards then everyone who's ever sinned is not a christian anymore is that what you're saying when we look at historical figures if the person has been balanced we just accept what's good and reject what's bad but if for years and years and years decades or whatever they've only been promoted as good they need to be taken off the shelf for a while not used as an example until we get a better perspective on them so jack hiles does not need to be used as an example of anything good for years and i'm i don't know who's listening to your podcast maybe ever but the point is like because you could have some i don't know who listens to your podcast or not but um it could be anybody wb riley um catch him uh any leader who's been promoted as sort of the foundational leader for a movement um whether it's john calvin or luther or the founders of the southern seminary or whoever it is jonathan edwards george whitfield john wesley whoever your leader is whoever you look to to define your movement if if they've only been portrayed as a good person you've got to take them down for a while you've got it so so fundamentalism john r rice needs to be taken down as a leader for years until we can put him in the right place and if he can withstand the scrutiny great put him back if jonathan edwards can withstand the scrutiny like peter could put him back okay but john r rice j frank norris lee roberson they've been held up as sort of the examples and the models and no one's talked about their racism no one's talked about the sexual abuse you can't just be like well now that we know about let's just move on no you've got to take them out of leadership until we can balance their image and then if they can still be like a peter great but there's a good chance they're not going to be like a peter they're going to be like a judas yeah and you won't be able to maintain them as leaders anymore but that that that scares people because what it means is redefining your tradition and really redefining your identity and there's nothing scary to people but but i love that because i love the way you said that because i'm sitting here thinking okay but how do we evaluate whether they're we then look at them as someone to look back to or not because you know i've only heard just as a personal testimony i've only heard good things about j frank norris my entire life until i started this study in february okay yeah but after every stone that i turned i can't find anything to them positively say about the guy right but then you know i'm like is there something that i can say okay yeah let's be honest about this guy but you know i don't want to treat him unfairly as i would a luther when i know luther's flaws yeah and they've been open about luther's flaws and so as we come to rice you know you can say well rice he had integrity he was you know he worked at getting along with people he was not disagreeable but here's some issues with him you know and treating them you know as best we can fairly and justly yeah and part of the problem is people people are not computers we're not computers we're not just brains we don't what's the bible say it's not know the right thing it's not do the right thing it's love god okay it's not just about knowing and believing it's about loving and that's an emotional that's a that's your your emotions that's your will that's your desires that's a bunch of stuff what comes to our leaders it's not just that john or rice or jane frank norris was held up as a model people love them so we're not objective about them it's not just like okay once we know everything it's fine it's more than that there's an attachment to these people which is what happens like that's normal but the attachment has to be broken when they've been held up in a way that's been false yeah and that takes time with jonathan edwards and and i've got professors who i love and who are great professors who i see them being very defensive about jonathan edwards because they've devoted their life to studying him and they've been they've really loved him they've really seen him as a model and they've they've become attached to him and now people are saying we need we're not even sure he's saved and they're like whoa that i can't well maybe he wasn't saved like why can't we accept that where did jesus say that jonathan edwards was saved and this is where his history comes in history gives you the true picture right and we then evaluate and the problem with edwards is yeah he was saved by all the information we were given but let's throw in some new information he kidnapped people and held them against their will does that sound like a saved person well i don't i'm gonna have to think about that one so it's now that we have more information more understanding can we can we see them in their true light or are we still attached to them and that's why you see you know the 100 hiles i don't know if you are aware of those pens that were handed out that's not just that we it wasn't that we agree with hiles that wasn't the point it was that we are for him no matter what okay when you have that level of attachment you've got to you've got to step back from that and and we've got to look at it not just look at objectively but make sure our hearts aren't drawn to the wrong kind of people j frank norris is a model and is held up literally as a model in some colleges like you can literally see a model of him pictures of him those are meant statues i'm getting to the statue thing statues go back to the old testament right statues are meant to to draw your heart to something it's not just to teach no one learns history from statues that's as a historian that's ridiculous thank you thank you i don't go to seminary and get a phd in history by walking around and looking at statues i don't remember the last time i looked at a historical statue yeah statues are designed to train your heart to love right okay so you you go to your grave site and you have a statue of your mother who died it's to honor her it's to raise her up it's to show that you love that person fine but when you have a statue of j frank norris you're teaching people when you have a picture of him and you have this bible and his shoes these are images teaching and training our hearts to value this person right you're saying that that person was that worthy of being remembered in that way yeah it wasn't just you know about him yeah it was you are meant to have a feeling about him a respect and honor in a way that you wouldn't honor somebody else who had the same qualities it's just sort of special attachment until that is broken you can't trust these leaders these historical figures and so what we need to do with fundamentalism is we need to take them all off the statue you know pull the statues down look at the history and if you want to put them back up okay but only after you're sure that they are worthy of being held up as a model and that's a lot of heart searching this is where christianity is really about searching your heart evaluating where you're you're making idols out of things it's interesting that the bible talks about graven images okay why because idols are representative of what we want a picture of what we love so it wasn't that you couldn't ever carve anything it was just that that's an easy way to make an idol out of something and so we're not too far past that you know the way people are literally killing to protect statues that sounds like an idol to me and so you got statues fundamentalism has an has a statue of jack isles you can say that's not an idol okay um they've got statues and they've got the hall of fame in colleges okay if you're willing to overlook their sin that's an idol so i think those last five minutes was now you know why i don't get invited now you know i don't get invited to these conferences man thank you so much for taking the time to come out come on the podcast today and uh i think that was the hit on all cylinders i appreciate it um any last things you want to say i mean i always try to end things the solution to all of this is love god's love for us changes our hearts we respond with love towards god through christ and then we love our neighbors that's the solution for fundamentalism it's worked out a lot of different ways but if we want to fix fundamentalism we've got to love people and love god like christ taught us to awesome well thanks for listening today guys the next time we're going to continue uh on this journey through the history of the ifb i'm going to i'm going to talk about uh the early days of jack hiles the rise of the mega churches in the 70s and 80s and uh if you enjoyed the episode please give it a share and make sure you give a rating for the podcast you can follow the podcast on facebook twitter and instagram and until next time to god not the pastor be the glory so you

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