Edward Joshua Poole-Connor (27 July 1872 to 20 January 1962) was an evangelical preacher and Christian leader whose ministry spanned a most turbulent period in British church life, from the time of Charles Spurgeon to the 1960s, and whose record and analysis of its events has been widely observed.
Following Spurgeon's lead in the Downgrade Controversy, he felt a strong responsibility to advocate ecclesiastical separation from churches he perceived to be in profound theological error.
[3] He wrote: Evangelicals who remain in complacent fellowship with those who deny their faith are not only failing to stem the tide of apostasy; they are accelerating the pace.
Their very leniency is eloquent advocacy; it cries aloud to multitudes that what men call liberalism in religion is far from being the harmful thing that Spurgeon thought it, for are not they - outstanding evangelicals - hand-in-glove with those who teach it?The FIEC is an association of churches, affiliated together in distinction from the other nonconformist denominations, which Poole-Connor perceived to be falling prey to serious defection from historic evangelical doctrine and practice.
[1] He served as secretary to the North Africa Mission, later known as Arab World Ministries, between his two pastorates at Talbot Tabernacle.