Independent Board for Presbyterian Foreign Missions is a small, independent Presbyterian mission agency, which early in its history became the missions board of the Bible Presbyterian Church

Bible Presbyterian Church

The Bible Presbyterian Church is an American Protestant denomination.-History:The Bible Presbyterian Church was formed in 1937, predominantly through the efforts of such conservative Presbyterian clergymen as Carl McIntire, J. Oliver Buswell and Allen A. MacRae. Francis Schaeffer was the first...

. Founded in 1933 by J. Gresham Machen, the IBPFM played a significant role in the Fundamentalist-Modernist Controversy

Fundamentalist-Modernist Controversy

The Fundamentalist–Modernist Controversy was a religious controversy in the 1920s and 30s within the Presbyterian Church in the United States of America that later created divisions in most American Christian denominations as well. The major American denomination was torn by conflict over the...

 within the Presbyterian Church. After Machen’s untimely death in 1937, the IBPFM came under the control of Carl McIntire

Carl McIntire

Carl McIntire was a founder of, and minister in, the Bible Presbyterian Church, founder and long president of the and the American Council of Christian Churches, and a popular religious radio broadcaster, who proudly identified himself as a fundamentalist.-Youth and education:Born in Ypsilanti,...

, the founder of the Bible Presbyterian Church.

In 2009, the Board supported about twenty missionaries or missionary couples, more non-North Americans than North Americans, with a majority of the former being South Koreans.

Origin

In 1932 the Presbyterian Board of Foreign Missions took an ambiguous position in regard to a theologically liberal report on missions, a decision that provided conservatives in the denomination further ammunition when one of the denomination's most prominent missionaries, the author Pearl Buck, endorsed the document as "masterly statement" and labeled traditional notions of salvation "superstitious." The following year, J. Gresham Machen, a theologically conservative intellectual, was most instrumental in creating the Independent Board for Presbyterian Foreign Missions. Interpreting the existence of the new board as a direct challenge to its denominational authority, the Presbyterian church brought the members of its board to trial—although Machen was never given the opportunity to defend his actions. In March 1935, the members of the Independent Board were found guilty and suspended from the ministry. In 1936, fundamentalists less concerned than Machen with the Board's Presbyterian identity, ousted Machen as president and installed "a minister of a nondenominational church."