Today we are going to deep dive into the world that Evan belonged to for the first 23 years of his life. A world that many consider bizarre yet harmless. While others, often those who have left this type of environment or similar ones, recognize the lasting impacts of the IFB on local communities and the U.S. as a whole. It should be noted upfront that this is an overview of the Independent Fundamental Baptists and we do not have the time to devote to a full history of the movement. Nor are we the appropriate platform to present such a detailed narrative. However, we will focus on five figures who have been among the most instrumental in perpetuating the IFB’s hate against queer and marginalized communities. We will also track the trajectory of mounting hate over the last 100 years. From veiled threats against queer people in the name of anti-communism, to the demand today that LGBTQ+ people be put to death. While most churches and organizations have declined in their activism against the queer population, the IFB has only become more aggressive. So now, let us dive into a history of, arguably, the most anti-LGBTQ+ group in America today. Frank Norris (1920 – 1952) Our story begins with a man who never picketed a Pride event and never heard the term gay in his life. Yet the movement created by J. Frank Norris paved the way for the IFB today. Some would consider Norris the father of the Independent Fundamental Baptists, he was certainly a founding father of the movement. Born in Alabama in 1877, Frank grew up in the poverty-ridden South, an area still reeling from the failed Reconstruction Era. Like many around them, the Norris family struggled to make ends meet and the hardships were made worse by the fact that Frank’s father was a raging alcoholic. Warner Norris often beat his young son and was even responsible for getting Frank shot at the age of 14. Perhaps it was his desire to find a place of belonging that led him to a Baptist revival meeting in 1890. [ J. Frank Norris ] For those who don’t know, revival meetings are often 3-7 day long affairs in which pastors and evangelists preach for several hours every night in an attempt to save lost souls (a.k.a anyone who does not follow their brand of faith). Initially, these were informal events that included a person walking to the center of a town and beginning to preach against the wickedness of those living in said town. Whether the preacher had ever actually been to the area before or knew anything about the community did not matter, in this vein of religion all people were wicked and lost. The eras would later be known as the First and Second Great Awakening and first fanned the flames of the modernist – fundamentalist split that began to appear on the horizon of America’s Protestant communities. In 1891, Charles Augustus Briggs was appointed as Professor of Biblical Theology at the Union Theological Seminary. During his inaugural address, Briggs represented the New School view on the doctrine of Higher Criticism. We will not bore our listeners with a dissection of this theological debate. In essence, Briggs stated that the Bible was not the literal word of God and that the history being taught about the Bible was wrong. The point of literalism is crucial as it directly relates to the way the IFB justifies their treatment of the LGBTQ+ today. The Briggs Affair was the first official rift in the fundamentals desire to split away from mainstream religion. The second rift came over the argument of Evolution and was led by a new fundamentalist celebrity, J. Frank Norris. After his conversion to the Baptist faith young Norris had gone off to a Seminary and earned his degree in Theology. He then pastored a few small churches before ending up at the congregation he would eventually turn into an early predeces...