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The General Association of Regular Baptist Churches (GARBC) was founded in 1929 as a reorganization of the Baptist Bible Union. It was a separatist organization from its inception, unlike its predecessors.

It was founded under the direction of Oliver W. Van Osdel, pastor of Wealthy Street Baptist Church of Grand Rapids, Michigan.

“The Baptist Bible Union came apart after the 1929 closing of its university in Des Moines. Under Van Osdel’s persuasion the Baptist Bible Union met for a final time in 1932 at Belden Avenue Baptist Church in Chicago. After formally dissolving the Union, the participants formed what became the General Association of Regular Baptist Churches” (Robert Delnay, “The Origins of the GARBC Articles of Faith,” garbc.org).

From the beginning, the GARBC had a pre-tribulational stance.

In 1975, the GARBC revised its Articles of Faith to add the six-day creation and a literal global flood. Member churches are required to agree with this. This was through the influence of the pioneering work The Genesis Flood (1961) by Henry Morris and John Whitcomb. In 1964, the Baptist Bulletin had endorsed the doctrine of six-day creation and global flood in an article by Arthur Williams entitled “The Genesis Account of Creation.”

GARBC congregations did not tend toward Quick Prayerism. There was more emphasis on repentance and evidentiary conversion. In church polity, the emphasis was on congregational rule. There was an emphasis on expository Bible preaching.

Originally, five mission boards were approved by the GARBC: Baptist Mid-Missions, The Association of Baptists for World Evangelism (ABWE), Fellowship of Baptists for Home Missions, Hiawatha Independent Baptist Missions, and Evangelical Baptist Missions.

Approved colleges and seminaries were Western Baptist Bible College (Salem, Oregon), Faith Baptist Bible College (Ankey, Iowa) (formerly Grace Baptist Bible College of Omaha), Grand Rapids Baptist Bible College and Seminary (Grand Rapids, Michigan), Cedarville College (Cedarville, Ohio), Baptist Bible College (Clarks Summit, Pennsylvania), and Los Angeles Baptist College and Seminary (Newhall, California).

The GARBC reached a high of 1,603 fellowshipping churches in 1984.

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GARBC’s Slide into New Evangelicalism

By the 1980s, the General Association of Regular Baptist Churches (GARBC) was infiltrated with the contemporary evangelical philosophy. Its founding statements on separation no longer reflected the view of a growing number of its pastors.

Consider two voices from the “old GARBC” as expressed in the official literature of the 1940s and 1950s.

GARBC Literature Item # 12, “The Position, Attitudes, and Objectives of Biblical Separation,” by Paul Jackson: “Separation is an eternal principle. It is God’s commandment that we must separate from unbelievers. Further, in the third place, it is God’s commandment that we separate from our brothers when they walk in disobedience. Now I know that many men who will go along forthrightly, and shout Amen as far as we have gone, will object at this point, and say ‘I believe in full fellowship with all evangelicals.’ Well, God doesn’t!”

GARBC Literature Item # 10, “A Limited Message or a Limited Fellowship,” by David Nettleton: “Many have been carried away from full obedience by a noble-sounding motto which has been applied to Christian work, ‘In essentials unity, in non-essentials liberty, and in all things charity.’ Some things are not essential to salvation but they are essential to full obedience, and the Christian has no liberty under God to sort out the Scriptures into essentials and non-essentials! It is our duty to declare the whole counsel of God, and to do it wherever we are.”

By the 1980s, the association’s founding position was labeled “second-degree” or “secondary” separation” by a new generation and was rejected as unreasonable, impractical, and unloving.

In 1985, GARBC-approved Los Angeles Baptist College became The Masters College with John MacArthur as its president. It dropped the GARBC connection. MacArthur does not hold to the separation taught by the GARBC in its founding documents.

“There were significant rumblings by 1986 among GARBC pastors that the fellowship of churches, as well as its approved agencies, were tolerating things which were inconsistent with the GARBC’s earlier formal position. The vocal response of some leaders within the Association was to disclaim any drift and to accuse those so concerned of being divisive and adding petty issues to their fundamentalist position. This response resulted in the formation and rise of Regular Baptists for Revival. These people urged a revival of and a return to the GARBC’s former convictions. These convictions were, after all, the ‘glue’ which held the Regular Baptist movement together” (George Houghton, “The GARBC A Rich History and Heritage - Part 1” Faith Pulpit, March 2004).

In the late 1980s, Ralph Colas and Ernest Pickering resigned from the board of the GARBC-approved Association of Baptists for World Evangelism (ABWE) because of its compromise. ABWE’s well-known work in Bangladesh, led by the medical doctor Viggo Olson (of Daktar fame), rejected biblical separatism for pragmatism and a larger tent of association and ministry. ABWE Bangladesh yoked together with organizations such as New Evangelical Wheaton College and the wretchedly apostate United Bible Societies. In 1988, William Commons, ABWE Director of Enlistment, praised Choices for Tomorrow’s Mission: An Evangelical Perspective on Trends and Issues in Missions by David Hesselgrave of Trinity Evangelical Divinity School. This book endorsed Billy Graham-style ecumenical evangelism. In the 1990s, prominent ABWE board member Charles Ware, spoke at an ecumenical conference in Indianapolis with men representing Promise Keepers and Campus Crusade.

In 1987, Western Baptist College began allowing faculty and trustees to be members of Conservative Baptist churches in spite of the New Evangelical compromise that had permeated the Conservative Baptists by that time.

In the 1990s, many GARBC preachers, such as Bill Rudd and Eric Strattan of Calvary Baptist Church, Muskegon, Michigan, participated in the radically ecumenical Promise Keepers, which yoked together with Roman Catholic priests. Rudd was chairman of the GARBC’s Council of Eighteen leadership committee. Calvary Baptist of Muskegon is a rock & roll, loosey-goosey evangelical church today. In the biographical sketches of the “Ministry Team,” all of the “Things I Like” pertain to entertainment: coffee drinking, video games, camping, hiking, football, epic movies, downhill skiing, pizza, bonfires, “explaining Star Wars to my kids, and the greatest work of cinematic art ever created: Moana.” What’s wrong with this? For one thing, it is a window into worldly living. There is nothing godly or biblical about Star Wars and Moana. Second, it’s a window into living with a this-world focus. Imagine what Paul or Peter or John would have stated when asked “What do you like?” Calvary Baptist of Muskegon aims for “cultural renewal.” There is a major focus on social-justice work. There is nothing whatsoever at the web site about biblical separation.

In 1990, Tim Jordan, Chancellor of Calvary Baptist Seminary of Lansdale, Pennsylvania, spoke at the GARBC national conference. He said, “If we produce ‘biblical’ reasons for cultural fundamentalism, they know you are lying. And why do they know you are lying? It’s because you are! ... They’re not going to do the ‘emperor’s clothes’ thing anymore” (“Fighting the Bantam Roosters,” Sharper Iron, June 30, 2010). By “cultural fundamentalism,” he was talking about such things as dress standards, music standards, Bible translations, smoking, drinking, dancing, and mixed swimming. Tim was saying that there is no legitimate biblical support for these things, and those who preach such standards are liars. Dan Davey, pastor of Colonial Hills Baptist Church in Virginia Beach, Virginia, and keynote speaker at the 2010 GARBC conference agreed with Jordan about the error of “cultural fundamentalism.” They do not want such things to get in the way of their push for Baptist-evangelical unity.

In the 1990s, the GARBC-approved Cornerstone College (which had begun as Grand Rapids School of the Bible, founded by David Otis Fuller) was partnering with New Evangelical and charismatic organizations through its Mission Network News. These organizations included Baptist World Alliance, Pat Robertson’s Christian Broadcasting Network, Evangelism Explosion, the Jesus Film Project, Luis Palau Evangelistic Association, Lutheran Bible Translators, and Youth for Christ International, which had long worked with Roman Catholics.

In June 1995, Richard Christen was elected the National Representative for the GARBC. In a “Vision Statement,” Christen said, “We must allow for differences in drawing the lines of secondary separation. ... We must shape a positive outlook and image.” Prior to his election, he told the gathering: “Instead of a two-foot thick wall around our GARBC, let’s build a sturdy picket fence.”

Earlier that year, Christen published an article entitled “A Reaffirmation and Clarification of Belief." It was a clever repudiation of biblical separation. Consider an excerpt:

“Distinctions do exist between evangelicals and fundamentalists. BUT LINES OF DEMARCATION ARE DOTTED, NOT SOLID. ... there may well be legitimate individual back-and-forth fellowship through the dotted lines, carefully orchestrated for the sake of mutual benefit and oneness in Christ’s true body. ... there are times when fundamentalists may venture into the evangelical camp and evangelicals into the fundamentalist camp. ... To be a voice repudiating does not mean we have to be a people alienating. ... There are legitimate inter-cooperative efforts among evangelicals.”

This ignores two important facts:

First, it ignores the rebellious character of compromise. The evangelical today is involved in deep disobedience. The Bible plainly forbids him to fellowship with heretics, but he claims he is free to do so. He claims there are advantages to doing so; therefore, he will do it. He follows pragmatism and ignores the clear instructions of the Scriptures. To fellowship with him in his disobedience instead of rebuking him and separating from him is to participate in his disobedience and is to say that his disobedience is not serious.

Second, it ignores the corrupting character of compromise. Compromise is a contagious disease. Compromise is an ATTITUDE of neutralism, a MOOD of positivism, a SPIRIT of non-militancy. This attitude, mood, and spirit is highly contagious. Those who refuse to practice biblical separation and persist in mingling with modern evangelicals will be affected by their compromise as certainly as night follows day. “Be not deceived: evil communications corrupt good manners” (1 Co. 15:33). Pastors who affiliate with compromising evangelicals bring that compromise into the lives of their people.

If ever there were a time to separate plainly from the modern evangelical world it is today. Evangelicalism today is filled to the brim with heresies.

Many books have documented this sad state of affairs, such as The Battle for the Bible and The Bible in Balance by Harold Lindsell, New Neutralism II by John Ashbrook, The Tragedy of Compromise by Ernest Pickering, Evangelicalism Divided by Iain Murray, The Great Evangelical Disaster by Francis Schaeffer, No Place for the Truth by David Wells, and The Coming Evangelical Crisis edited by John Armstrong.

We have summarized this documentation in New Evangelicalism: Its History, Characteristics, and Fruit, available as a free eBook from www.wayoflife.org. It is designed to be used as a course for churches, homes, and schools and has extensive review questions.

We have also summarized the great dangers that exist in the broad world of evangelicalism in the video presentation “Contemporary Music as a Bridge to Dangerous Waters,” which is part of the video series The Satanic Attack on Sacred Music. In “Bridge to Dangerous Waters” we document the dangers of charismaticism, the one-world church, secular rock, homosexual Christianity, contemplative prayer, the modern Bible versions, cultural liberalism, the downgrade of Bible inspiration, process salvation, salvation apart from faith in Christ, theistic evolution, the downgrade of hell, and false gods and goddesses. The text of this series can also be found in The Satanic Attack on Sacred Music - The Book. Both the videos and the book are available for free at www.wayoflife.org.

Christen’s picket fence separation was a clear rejection of the old GARBC (biblical) standard of separation. The spaces within the GARBC’s picket fence approach to separatism have grown wider with each passing decade and they will continue to do so.

In 2020, an older preacher, retired pastor, author, said, “The GARBC are on a fast track into the new evangelical mainstream.”

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The study on the GARBC in The History and Heritage of Fundamentalism and Fundamental Baptists also includes the following sections:

• Robert Ketcham
• GARBC Literature
• GARBC and Calvinism
• Wealthy Street Baptist Church of Grand Rapids, Michigan (Oliver Osdel and David Otis Fuller)
• Rolland Starr and Cornerstone Baptist Church