Rev. E. P. Fosmark

 In 1943 Rev. Edwin Palmer Fosmark, who at that time  was the pastor of the First Baptist Church of Jamestown, North Dakota, was called to be the General Secretary of the Minnesota Baptist Convention, which was then affiliated with the Northern Baptist Convention.

E. P. Fosmark had been reared in Enchant, Alberta, Canada, and had left home at the age of 13 to become a cowboy for the next 8 years, herding cattle and horses from Canada to Texas.  When he returned home at the age of 21, his older brother, Carl, who was a Norwegian Free Church of Canada pastor, led him to accept the Lord as his personal Saviour.  E. P. Fosmark immediately left for Chicago to attend the Moody Bible Institute.  After graduation in 1931, he entered Trinity Seminary, a Free Church seminary, which was then operating in Minneapolis, Minnesota.  While attending seminary, he also attended the great First Baptist Church, and came under the influence of Dr. W. B. Riley, who took him under his wing, and personally mentored him.  When he graduated from Trinity, he came out calling himself “a convicted Baptist, a fighting fundamentalist, an incurable separatist, an eternal optimist, and a confirmed local church man.”

At the urging of Dr. Riley, E. P. Fosmark joined the Fundamental Baptist Fellowship of the Northern Baptist Convention.  Dr. Riley had begun this movement within the  Northern Baptist Convention to give a voice to fundamentalism within the modernist controlled convention.  While in the FBF, E. P. Fosmark made close friendship with Dr. R. V. Clearwaters who was then pastoring in the state of Iowa.

For the next two years following graduation from seminary, E. P. Fosmark served as an evangelist, personal soul winner and itinerant church planting missionary in Upper Ontario, Canada.  During this time he traveled by railroad, Model T, canoe, and dogsled in the wintertime.  He held evangelist meetings, and was used to start some 22 churches in isolated communities.  His years as a cowboy served him well, sleeping under the stars and cooking over a campfire in the wild country of Upper Ontario.

After getting married in 1937, he took a pastorate in Jamestown, North Dakota, and served there until 1943.

Meanwhile in Minnesota, Dr. Riley and Dr. Clearwaters, who had moved to Minneapolis in 1940, knew that not only was the national convention split between the modernist proponents and fundamentalists, but that the Minnesota state convention was very divided.  Modernism had a strong foothold in the state, and the fundamentalists were also divided over those who wished to stay within the national convention in order to try to purge out the modernism, and those fundamentalists who knew that the time had come to separate from the modernism and infidelity that was rampant within the Northern Baptist Convention.  Also they knew that the battle to save the state convention for fundamentalism would be a bitter battle.  Dr. Riley and Dr. Clearwaters suggested to the state board that they call Rev. E.P. Fosmark, the “fighting fundamentalist,” to lead them in the battle as the state general secretary.  To this suggestion the board agreed, and they issued the call.  Rev. E. P. Fosmark accepted the call, and moved to Minneapolis in the later part of 1943.

Immediately upon arrival in Minnesota, Rev. Fosmark “hit the trail” to visit every church within the state convention, seeking to hold revival meetings, and to make each pastor and church member aware of the modernism that was then in control of the national convention.  Mrs. Harriet Bratrud, a doctor’s wife and member of the state convention board, in speaking with this author, called Rev. Fosmark “a hound for the trail,” and also when telling of the fierce opposition and persecution meted out by the modernist leadership of the Northern Baptist Convention against Rev. Fosmark, Mrs. Bratrud said “we almost killed the poor dear!”

During the next two years, Rev. Fosmark continued to visit all the state churches, and to preach on the text found in II Corinthians 6:14-18:

     “Be ye not unequally yoked together with unbelievers:

     for what fellowship hath righteousness  with unrighteousness?

     and what communion hath light with darkness?

     And what concord hath Christ with Belial?

     or what part hath he that believeth with an infidel?

     And what agreement hath the temple of God with idols?

     for ye are the temple of the living God;

     as God hath said, I will dwell in them, and walk in them;

     and I will be their God, and they shall by my people.

     Wherefore come out from among them, and be ye separate, saith the Lord,

     and touch not the unclean thing; and I will receive you.

     And I will be a father unto you, and ye shall be my sons and daughters,

     saith the Lord Almighty.”

In response to this challenge the churches of the Minnesota Baptist Convention, in their annual state meeting in 1946, voted to leave the Northern Baptist Convention, and to become an independent state Baptist convention.  Praise the Lord for their willingness to take a separated stand for the fundamentals of the faith, for Baptist distinctives, for the whole counsel of God as their sole authority for faith and practice.  They subsequently took stands against new evangelism, ecumenism and ecumenical evangelism.  Isaiah 8:20 became the key verse among the churches of the Minnesota Baptist Convention (now called the Minnesota Baptist Association).

      “To the law and to the testimony: if they speak not according to this word,

      it is because there is no light in them.”

by Dr. Paul Fosmark - a Baptist preacher for 60 years