Rev. Dr. Roy Talmage Brumbaugh (1890-1957) of Tacoma, Washington, was one of the leading preachers nationally on the conservative side in the 1920s and 1930s in the “modernist vs. fundamentalist” religious controversy within Protestant churches. Brumbaugh, a graduate of Gettysburg College (1912) and Princeton Theological Seminary (1919) with an honorary Doctor of Divinity degree also from Gettysburg (1930) was an outstanding breakaway football and basketball athlete in his college years as well as a breakaway preacher and evangelist in his mid-life. In 1935, his mentor Rev. Dr. J. Gresham Machen, a professor of New Testament at the Princeton Seminary 1904-1929, and he created the only major schism during the 20th century within the Presbyterian Church of the United States of America.

The PC-USA, led by moderate or liberal ministers and laymen, charged conservatives Brumbaugh with insubordination and Machen with violation of his ordination. Through separate, ecclesiastical trials these charges resulted in 1935 convictions and in the suspension of both their mainstream ministries.

Brumbaugh’s flock largely supported him and went with him around the block to found the non- denominational Independent Bible Church of Tacoma the same week he left. After the PTS in 1929 was taken over by its liberal faction, Machen resigned his professorship there and served as the intellectual leader of the conservative movement. Machen founded in 1930 Westminster Theological Seminary and in 1933 the Independent Board of Presbyterian Foreign Missions, to the boards of both of which he appointed Brumbaugh. Machen also founded the Presbyterian Orthodox Church denomination but died suddenly on January 1, 1937, at age 55. Later that year the denomination elected Brumbaugh as president of the Fundamentalist Ministers of America.

Brumbaugh authored numerous books and pamphlets on religious subjects and maintained a radio program in the 1930s and 1940s in the US Northwest. Her served as a Lt. Col. in the Washington State militia during the Second World War and as a member of The Society of Sons of the American Revolution, Washington chapter.

Brumbaugh went on the leave his church again in 1941, served the pulpit of the Bible Presbyterian Church of Tacoma until 1945, and then returned that year to his renamed Independent Bible Presbyterian Church of Tacoma. In 1950, the International Council of Christian Churches selected him to go on a round-the-world trip to visit missionaries, like-minded preachers and see the world, ending his trip at the Second Plenary Conference of the International Council of Christian Churches (ICCC) in Geneva, Switzerland, where he lay a wreath at the feet of a statue of lawyer and theologian John Calvin.

Roy kept a diary of that significant round-the-world trip which the author has transcribed, edited and annotated. Under the title of Roy T. Brumbaugh, The Diary of an American Fundamentalist Minister’s ‘Round-the-World’ Trip to Visit Missionaries, Like-Minded Preachers and See the World, the diary may be found at the libraries of Princeton Theological Seminary, Gettysburg College, and select other seminaries.

Brumbaugh died January 3, 1957, as one of the largely acknowledged leaders of the fundamentalist faction which, though it has remained small, has also remained active and vibrant. The site is maintained by two of his grandsons, David C. Sinding and Norman E. “Ned” Donoghue II.