Founded in 1933 by J. Gresham Machen, the IBPFM played a significant role in the Fundamentalist–Modernist Controversy within the Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A.
The Independent Board continues under its founding charter, maintaining its original purpose of "promoting truly Biblical missions" consistent with Presbyterian doctrine and polity.
[1] In 1932, the Presbyterian Board of Foreign Missions took an ambiguous position in regard to a theologically liberal report on missions, a decision that provided conservatives in the denomination further ammunition when one of the denomination's most prominent missionaries, the author Pearl S. Buck, endorsed the document as "masterly statement" and labeled traditional notions of salvation "superstitious."
The following year, conservative theologian J. Gresham Machen was instrumental in creating the Independent Board for Presbyterian Foreign Missions.
"[3] After Machen's untimely death in 1937, the IBPFM came under the control of Carl McIntire, the founder of the Bible Presbyterian Church.