Robert T. Ketcham
Encyclopedia
Robert Thomas Ketcham was a Baptist
pastor, a leader of separationist fundamentalism, and a founder of the General Association of Regular Baptist Churches
.
, USA to Charles O. and Sarah Bullock Ketcham, active members of the local Methodist Church. Charles was a small farmer and milkman. Sarah Ketcham died when Robert was seven, and his father married a widow, Louise Elliot. Because Louise was a Baptist, the family then joined the Baptist church. When Robert was eleven, the family moved a bit more than twenty miles west to Galeton, Pennsylvania
. (There were thirty-three members, twenty-eight of them women.)
Roulette was a village, but its religious and political demographics were unusual. For instance, the town had many Seventh-day Adventists and Spiritualists, and the majority of its voters were socialists. (Eugene Debs had spoken there.) Ketcham, who was studious by inclination, read extensively to understand and refute these opposing ideologies. He also began taking a correspondence course from Crozer Theological Seminary
but gave it up during his second year when he detected theological liberalism in an assigned text.
Meanwhile, Ketcham's eyesight began to fail with keratoconus
. Although he could read with a book pressed almost to his nose, he began to memorize scripture so as not to call attention to his loss of sight while in the pulpit. After one service, a deacon dryly told him that he had "read" the scripture flawlessly while holding the Bible upside down. Ketcham was virtually blind for most of his career although he continued to read printed material with a magnifying glass and in the pulpit used rudimentary notes written in very large letters on black paper with a white grease pencil.
Ketcham’s pastorate in Roulette was extremely successful, and many converts were added to the church. During an evangelistic campaign in 1914, four hundred people made professions of faith, about the same number as the population of the town. In 1915, Ketcham was reluctantly ordained by a local Baptist council despite his fundamentalist beliefs and lack of formal education. The same year he accepted the call to the Baptist church of Brookeville, Pennsylvania, where he contracted influenza
during the pandemic of 1918
.
, where he became more active in defense of orthodox Christianity especially by opposing liberal tendencies in the Northern Baptist Convention. When the Convention launched a "New World Movement" to create a "civilization Christian in spirit," Ketcham wrote a pamphlet with the unpromising title, "A Statement of the First Baptist Church Butler, Pennsylvania, with Reference to The New World Movement and the $100,000,000 Drive (1919)." Soon after the pamphlet was published, Ketcham received a visit from officers of the Pittsburgh Baptist Association, who made it clear that if Ketcham did not retract the pamphlet, he would never get another pastorate in the Northern Baptist Convention; one member of the committee shook Ketcham by the collar and "roared that Ketchan owed God an apology." Leading fundamentalist William Bell Riley
, pastor of the First Baptist Church, Minneapolis, saw the pamphlet and ordered 20,000 copies. The essay was widely distributed and it "established the young pastor as an articulate spokesman for Fundamentalism."
Shortly thereafter, his wife, Clara, died of tuberculosis, leaving him with the care of two young daughters. In 1922, Ketcham married Mary Smart of Lock Haven, Pennsylvania
, and this marriage endured for more than fifty years.
For their honeymoon, Ketcham took his new wife to the annual meeting of the National Baptist Convention, where for twelve years, he and other fundamentalists in the Northern Baptist Convention unsuccessfully attempted to wrest control of the organization from moderates and liberals. In 1923, the conservatives formed the Baptist Bible Union, an unsuccessful attempt to unite fundamentalist Baptists, and Ketcham became a member of the executive committee. The same year, Ketcham also moved to Ohio to pastor successively Baptist churches in Niles
and Elyria
.
(GARBC) in 1932, he was elected vice-president in 1933 and president in 1934. Ketcham successfully campaigned for a looser fellowship of churches rather than a reestablishment of the boards and agencies of the Northern Baptist Convention. He also successfully insisted that membership in the GARBC be open only to churches who first severed their ties with the Convention.
By this time Ketcham had assumed the pastorate of the Central Baptist Church of Gary, Indiana
, and in 1934 he pulled the church out of the Northern Baptist Convention by emphasizing its ties to both religious and political liberalism.
Ketcham served as president of the GARBC from 1934 to 1938 and then restructured the organization to place control in a Council of 14. Nevertheless, "for the next 30 years, he shaped the General Association of Regular Baptist Churches." He served as national representative of the association from 1946 to 1960, and he edited the denominational organ, The Baptist Bulletin (1938-1945, 1946-1955) while pastoring the Walnut Street Baptist Church of Waterloo, Iowa
, the largest Baptist Church in the state. In 1944, Ketcham was elected president of the fundamentalist American Council of Christian Churches
, which he believed might be an effective counter to the Federal Council of Churches of Christ (later the National Council of Churches
), which claimed to speak for all of Protestant Christianity in the United States.
During the 1930s and '40s, Ketcham was dogged by repeated attacks from J. Frank Norris
, an influential fundamentalist from Texas with a reputation for making vicious personal assaults. Norris was miffed that he had not been allowed to join the GARBC, which Ketcham and other leaders thought he might try to manipulate for the benefit of his own programs and eccentric personality. In the pages of his Fundamentalist, Norris even attacked Ketcham's daughter, Lois Moffat, for having left the mission field, although she had arrived in the United States near death and remained hospitalized and gravely ill for months. Eventually Ketcham's Waterloo church offered to put all its resources at his disposal so that he could sue Norris for libel and slander. Ketcham replied, "I cannot take a man into court whom I have been taking to the court of high Heaven now for several years."
, pastor of Moody Memorial Church, issued a statement declaring that liberals and fundamentalists should unite "in one great army for Christ." Ketcham was horrified, but he conducted a respectful written exchange with Redpath for almost five years, concluding with the statement, "Forget me as a critic Brother Redpath, and think of me only as a brother in Christ pleading with you to pull away from these entangling alliances before you wind up with Jehoshaphat
." Although evangelist Percy Crawford
generally disliked fundamentalists who directed attacks at other believers, he and Ketcham developed a life-long "friendship and mutual affection," in part because Ketcham had "an unassuming manner" and a "fun-loving spirit." In the 1960s Ketcham pleaded with his long-time friend Carl McIntire
to "be more gracious in his dealings with other Christians," although McIntire instead used his Christian Beacon to attack members of the General Association of Regular Baptist Churches.
Baptist
Baptists comprise a group of Christian denominations and churches that subscribe to a doctrine that baptism should be performed only for professing believers , and that it must be done by immersion...
pastor, a leader of separationist fundamentalism, and a founder of the General Association of Regular Baptist Churches
General Association of Regular Baptist Churches
The General Association of Regular Baptist Churches is one of several Baptist groups in North America retaining the name "Regular Baptist"....
.
Youth
Robert Ketcham was born in Tioga County, PennsylvaniaTioga County, Pennsylvania
Tioga County is a county located in the U.S. state of Pennsylvania. As of the 2010 census, the population was 41,981. Tioga County was created on March 26, 1804, from part of Lycoming County and named for the Tioga River. Its county seat is Wellsboro....
, USA to Charles O. and Sarah Bullock Ketcham, active members of the local Methodist Church. Charles was a small farmer and milkman. Sarah Ketcham died when Robert was seven, and his father married a widow, Louise Elliot. Because Louise was a Baptist, the family then joined the Baptist church. When Robert was eleven, the family moved a bit more than twenty miles west to Galeton, Pennsylvania
Galeton, Pennsylvania
Galeton is a borough in Potter County, Pennsylvania, United States, southeast of Bradford. Light industries such as knitting mills and a tannery have existed in Galeton. In 1900, 2,415 people lived in Galeton, and 4,027 people lived there in 1910...
Early ministry
At sixteen, Robert, a stubborn young man who disliked his parents' discipline, quit high school and left home. Nevertheless, in 1910 he was converted at the Galeton Baptist Church and, despite his lack of formal education, was called in 1912 to pastor the tiny First Baptist Church, Roulette, Pennsylvania, on the Allegheny RiverAllegheny River
The Allegheny River is a principal tributary of the Ohio River; it is located in the Eastern United States. The Allegheny River joins with the Monongahela River to form the Ohio River at the "Point" of Point State Park in Downtown Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania...
. (There were thirty-three members, twenty-eight of them women.)
Roulette was a village, but its religious and political demographics were unusual. For instance, the town had many Seventh-day Adventists and Spiritualists, and the majority of its voters were socialists. (Eugene Debs had spoken there.) Ketcham, who was studious by inclination, read extensively to understand and refute these opposing ideologies. He also began taking a correspondence course from Crozer Theological Seminary
Crozer Theological Seminary
The Crozer Theological Seminary was a multi-denominational religious institution located in Upland, Pennsylvania. The school succeeded a Normal School established at the site and the building's use as a hospital during the American Civil War...
but gave it up during his second year when he detected theological liberalism in an assigned text.
Meanwhile, Ketcham's eyesight began to fail with keratoconus
Keratoconus
Keratoconus , is a degenerative disorder of the eye in which structural changes within the cornea cause it to thin and change to a more conical shape than its normal gradual curve....
. Although he could read with a book pressed almost to his nose, he began to memorize scripture so as not to call attention to his loss of sight while in the pulpit. After one service, a deacon dryly told him that he had "read" the scripture flawlessly while holding the Bible upside down. Ketcham was virtually blind for most of his career although he continued to read printed material with a magnifying glass and in the pulpit used rudimentary notes written in very large letters on black paper with a white grease pencil.
Ketcham’s pastorate in Roulette was extremely successful, and many converts were added to the church. During an evangelistic campaign in 1914, four hundred people made professions of faith, about the same number as the population of the town. In 1915, Ketcham was reluctantly ordained by a local Baptist council despite his fundamentalist beliefs and lack of formal education. The same year he accepted the call to the Baptist church of Brookeville, Pennsylvania, where he contracted influenza
Influenza
Influenza, commonly referred to as the flu, is an infectious disease caused by RNA viruses of the family Orthomyxoviridae , that affects birds and mammals...
during the pandemic of 1918
Spanish flu
The 1918 flu pandemic was an influenza pandemic, and the first of the two pandemics involving H1N1 influenza virus . It was an unusually severe and deadly pandemic that spread across the world. Historical and epidemiological data are inadequate to identify the geographic origin...
.
Fundamentalist leader
In 1919, Ketcham became pastor of the First Baptist Church of Butler, PennsylvaniaButler, Pennsylvania
The city of Butler is the county seat of Butler County in the U.S. state of Pennsylvania, situated north of Pittsburgh. The population was 15,121 at the 2000 census.- History :...
, where he became more active in defense of orthodox Christianity especially by opposing liberal tendencies in the Northern Baptist Convention. When the Convention launched a "New World Movement" to create a "civilization Christian in spirit," Ketcham wrote a pamphlet with the unpromising title, "A Statement of the First Baptist Church Butler, Pennsylvania, with Reference to The New World Movement and the $100,000,000 Drive (1919)." Soon after the pamphlet was published, Ketcham received a visit from officers of the Pittsburgh Baptist Association, who made it clear that if Ketcham did not retract the pamphlet, he would never get another pastorate in the Northern Baptist Convention; one member of the committee shook Ketcham by the collar and "roared that Ketchan owed God an apology." Leading fundamentalist William Bell Riley
William Bell Riley
William Bell Riley was known as "The Grand Old Man of Fundamentalism." After being educated at normal school in Valparaiso, Indiana, Riley received his teacher's certificate. After teaching in county schools, he attended college in Hanover, Indiana, where he received an A.B. degree in 1885...
, pastor of the First Baptist Church, Minneapolis, saw the pamphlet and ordered 20,000 copies. The essay was widely distributed and it "established the young pastor as an articulate spokesman for Fundamentalism."
Shortly thereafter, his wife, Clara, died of tuberculosis, leaving him with the care of two young daughters. In 1922, Ketcham married Mary Smart of Lock Haven, Pennsylvania
Lock Haven, Pennsylvania
The city of Lock Haven is the county seat of Clinton County, in the U.S. state of Pennsylvania. Located near the confluence of the West Branch Susquehanna River and Bald Eagle Creek, it is the principal city of the Lock Haven, Pennsylvania, micropolitan statistical area, itself part of the...
, and this marriage endured for more than fifty years.
For their honeymoon, Ketcham took his new wife to the annual meeting of the National Baptist Convention, where for twelve years, he and other fundamentalists in the Northern Baptist Convention unsuccessfully attempted to wrest control of the organization from moderates and liberals. In 1923, the conservatives formed the Baptist Bible Union, an unsuccessful attempt to unite fundamentalist Baptists, and Ketcham became a member of the executive committee. The same year, Ketcham also moved to Ohio to pastor successively Baptist churches in Niles
Niles, Ohio
Niles is a city in Trumbull County, Ohio, United States. The city's population was 20,932 at the 2000 census. It is part of the Youngstown-Warren-Boardman, OH-PA Metropolitan Statistical Area....
and Elyria
Elyria, Ohio
-Community:Elyria has an extensive, although financially burdened, community food pantry and "Hot Meals" program administered through the Second Harvest Food Bank and several churches Elyria is served by Elyria Memorial Hospital.-Recreation and parks:...
.
General Association of Regular Baptist Churches
Although Ketcham did not attend the first meeting of the General Association of Regular Baptist ChurchesGeneral Association of Regular Baptist Churches
The General Association of Regular Baptist Churches is one of several Baptist groups in North America retaining the name "Regular Baptist"....
(GARBC) in 1932, he was elected vice-president in 1933 and president in 1934. Ketcham successfully campaigned for a looser fellowship of churches rather than a reestablishment of the boards and agencies of the Northern Baptist Convention. He also successfully insisted that membership in the GARBC be open only to churches who first severed their ties with the Convention.
By this time Ketcham had assumed the pastorate of the Central Baptist Church of Gary, Indiana
Gary, Indiana
Gary is a city in Lake County, Indiana, United States. The city is in the southeastern portion of the Chicago metropolitan area and is 25 miles from downtown Chicago. The population is 80,294 at the 2010 census, making it the seventh-largest city in the state. It borders Lake Michigan and is known...
, and in 1934 he pulled the church out of the Northern Baptist Convention by emphasizing its ties to both religious and political liberalism.
Ketcham served as president of the GARBC from 1934 to 1938 and then restructured the organization to place control in a Council of 14. Nevertheless, "for the next 30 years, he shaped the General Association of Regular Baptist Churches." He served as national representative of the association from 1946 to 1960, and he edited the denominational organ, The Baptist Bulletin (1938-1945, 1946-1955) while pastoring the Walnut Street Baptist Church of Waterloo, Iowa
Waterloo, Iowa
Waterloo is a city in and the county seat of Black Hawk County, Iowa, United States. As of the 2010 United States Census the population decreased by 0.5% to 68,406. Waterloo is part of the Waterloo – Cedar Falls Metropolitan Statistical Area, and is the more populous of the two...
, the largest Baptist Church in the state. In 1944, Ketcham was elected president of the fundamentalist American Council of Christian Churches
American Council of Christian Churches
The American Council of Christian Churches was founded in 1941 under the leadership of Carl McIntire. McIntire and others created a fundamentalist organization set up in opposition to the Federal Council of Churches...
, which he believed might be an effective counter to the Federal Council of Churches of Christ (later the National Council of Churches
National Council of Churches
The National Council of the Churches of Christ in the USA is an ecumenical partnership of 37 Christian faith groups in the United States. Its member denominations, churches, conventions, and archdioceses include Mainline Protestant, Orthodox, African American, Evangelical, and historic peace...
), which claimed to speak for all of Protestant Christianity in the United States.
During the 1930s and '40s, Ketcham was dogged by repeated attacks from J. Frank Norris
J. Frank Norris
John Franklyn Norris was a flamboyant Baptist preacher, one of the most controversial figures in the history of fundamentalism.-Biography:...
, an influential fundamentalist from Texas with a reputation for making vicious personal assaults. Norris was miffed that he had not been allowed to join the GARBC, which Ketcham and other leaders thought he might try to manipulate for the benefit of his own programs and eccentric personality. In the pages of his Fundamentalist, Norris even attacked Ketcham's daughter, Lois Moffat, for having left the mission field, although she had arrived in the United States near death and remained hospitalized and gravely ill for months. Eventually Ketcham's Waterloo church offered to put all its resources at his disposal so that he could sue Norris for libel and slander. Ketcham replied, "I cannot take a man into court whom I have been taking to the court of high Heaven now for several years."
Decline and death
In 1959 Ketcham had a major heart attack and nearly died. Both his physical strength and his eyesight continued to decline. He preached less frequently through the 1960s, sometimes while sitting on a stool. One of his last messages was given in February 1974. In both 1976 and 1978, he suffered severe strokes, the latter of which left him bedridden and without the ability to speak. Ketcham died on August 20, 1978.Personality
Because of his fearlessness in defending his fundamentalist beliefs, Ketcham was sometimes called "Fighting Bob," a name he "disliked intensely." His personality was actually irenic, and his son later said that when Ketcham believed that he had no choice but to fight, he would literally cry himself to sleep. Although he refused to maintain any connection with religious liberals, whom he believed had deprecated Jesus Christ, Ketcham maintained friendly relations with other evangelicals with whom he had serious differences. For instance, in 1954, Alan RedpathAlan Redpath
Alan Redpath , was a well-known British evangelist, pastor and author.-Biography:Alan Redpath was born in Newcastle upon Tyne, the only son of James and Christina Redpath. He went to Durham School, and then studied to be chartered accountant in Newcastle, completing this in 1928. He then worked as...
, pastor of Moody Memorial Church, issued a statement declaring that liberals and fundamentalists should unite "in one great army for Christ." Ketcham was horrified, but he conducted a respectful written exchange with Redpath for almost five years, concluding with the statement, "Forget me as a critic Brother Redpath, and think of me only as a brother in Christ pleading with you to pull away from these entangling alliances before you wind up with Jehoshaphat
Jehoshaphat
Jehoshaphat was the fourth king of the The Kingdom of Judah, and successor of his father Asa. His children included Jehoram, who succeeded him as king...
." Although evangelist Percy Crawford
Percy Crawford
Percy Bartimus Crawford was an evangelist and fundamentalist leader who especially emphasized youth ministry. During the late 1950s, he saw the potential of FM radio and UHF television and built the first successful Christian broadcasting network...
generally disliked fundamentalists who directed attacks at other believers, he and Ketcham developed a life-long "friendship and mutual affection," in part because Ketcham had "an unassuming manner" and a "fun-loving spirit." In the 1960s Ketcham pleaded with his long-time friend 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,...
to "be more gracious in his dealings with other Christians," although McIntire instead used his Christian Beacon to attack members of the General Association of Regular Baptist Churches.
Publications
- I Shall Not Want: An Exposition Of Psalm Twenty-Three (Chicago: Moody Press, 1953)
- Old Testament Pictures Of New Testament Truth (Des Plaines, Illinois: Regular Baptist Press, 1965)
- Sermons (Des Plaines, Illinois: Regular Baptist Press, 1966)
- God's Provision for Normal Christian Living (Schaumburg, Illinois: Regular Baptist Press, 1977).
- The Necessity for the Formation of the General Association of Regular Baptist Churches
- What is the General Association of Regular Baptist Churches?