Haldeman, I. M.

( 1845-1933 )

   leading Fundamentalist Baptist preacher

   Isaac Massey Haldeman, a prominent Fundamentalist and pastor of First Baptist Church of New York City, was born in Concordville, Pennsylvania, on February 13, 1845. He was ordained as a minister in the Northern Baptist Convention and served several churches before being called in 1884 to First Baptist, where he remained for the rest of his life, gradually making a name for his oratorical skills.

   His career in New York spanned the emergence of Fundamentalism and its major battles with Modernism in the Northern Baptist Convention. Haldeman became a leading spokesperson for the Fundamentalist cause. He was also an early convert to premillennial DiSPENSATiONALiSM.In 1910, he wrote Signs of the Times, one of the early surveys of the end-time from a dispensational perspective. He later wrote a defense of the Scofield Reference Bible and its editor, C. I. Scofield.

   Haldeman tackled the ideas of the more liberal voices in the convention, including Walter Rauschenbush (1861-1918), who championed the social gospel, and Harry Emerson Fosdick (1878-1969), the prominent liberal Baptist pastor in New York City. He also battled inroads of new religions such as Christian Science and Spiritualism.

   Haldeman died in New York City on September 27, 1933.

   Further reading:

   ■ I. M. Haldeman, Christian Science in the Light of Holy Scripture (New York: Fleming H. Revell, 1909)

   ■ ----, The Coming of Christ - PreMillennial & Imminent (New York: Charles C. Cook, 1906)

   ■ ----, The Signs of the Times (New York: Charles C. Cook., 1912)

   ■ George Marsden, Fundamentalism and American Culture (New York: oxford University Press, 1980).