Religion: Fundamental Fundamentalist

It was a busy, happy week for Carl McIntire. He had just published a new book (Modern Tower of Babel; Christian Beacon Press; $1.50) crammed to the covers with haymaker denunciations of his numerous enemies. He received word that two new denominations had voted to join his American Council of Christian Churches. But no less rewarding was the news that came from Madison, Wis. Before the Wisconsin Council of Churches, Theologian John C. Bennett of Union Theological Seminary had referred to some of McIntire’s activities as “unscrupulous vilification.” Exclaimed McIntire delightedly, “They’re getting to be very conscious of the American Council!”

Outside Looking In. On the right wing of U.S. Protestantism, the Fundamentalist American Council of Churches is the farthest tip. Most of its light and heat emanate from its dynamic founder, strapping Carl McIntire. Born 43 years ago in Ypsilanti, Mich., Carl McIntire became a minister in the Northern Presbyterian church. But his violent accusations of “modernism” and corruption against the leadership of his church soon earned him a painful formal expulsion from the Presbyterian fold. Ever since then, Carl McIntire has been on the outside looking in—and not liking much of what he sees.

First, he joined a newly formed splinter sect, the “Presbyterian Church of America.” In less than a year he broke away, to form his own “Bible Presbyterian Church” (present membership about 8,000). In 1941 he founded the American Council of Christian Churches, which now numbers 18 small sects.

McIntire would like to see his American Council taken seriously as the formal opposition to the Federal Council of Churches. His main charges against the Federal Council: 1) identifying Christianity with social reforms; 2) failing to accept every word of the Bible as literally true; 3) trying to make some sort of a deal with the Roman Catholic Church (“a system which enslaves and destroys the souls of mortal men”).

Unchristian Idea. McIntire seldom misses an opportunity to embarrass and harass his opponent. A few days before the Assembly of the World Council of Churches met at Amsterdam last August, McIntire was in Amsterdam holding his own meeting of the “International Council of Christian Churches.” Whenever he could get startled reporters to listen, he fulminated that the leaders of the World Council “include radical pacifists and socialists . . . This assembly is going to serve Communist ends.” On such occasions, the American Council’s impressive-sounding name often wins attention.

At the American Council’s spring convention in Denver last fortnight, the 30 delegates passed resolutions opposing, among other things, “Brotherhood Week” and federal aid to education. The brotherhood of man, McIntire has said, is an unchristian idea. “Jesus Christ repudiated the popular doctrine that is on the lips of thousands of preachers today—the universal Fatherhood of God. There is no such doctrine taught in the Bible. Neither does its corollary, the brotherhood of man, exist in the Bible.”