Although he could read with a book pressed almost to his nose, he began to memorize scripture so as not to call attention to his loss of sight while in the pulpit.
[7] Ketcham was virtually blind for most of his career although he continued to read printed material with a magnifying glass and in the pulpit used rudimentary notes written in very large letters on black paper with a white grease pencil.
In 1915, Ketcham was reluctantly ordained by a local Baptist council despite his fundamentalist beliefs and lack of formal education.
"[11] Leading fundamentalist William Bell Riley, pastor of the First Baptist Church, Minneapolis, saw the pamphlet and ordered 20,000 copies.
Although Ketcham did not attend the first meeting of the General Association of Regular Baptist Churches (GARBC) in 1932, he was elected vice-president in 1933 and president in 1934.
Ketcham successfully campaigned for a looser fellowship of churches rather than a reestablishment of the boards and agencies of the Northern Baptist Convention.
During the 1930s and '40s, Ketcham was dogged by repeated attacks from J. Frank Norris, an influential fundamentalist from Texas with a reputation for making vicious personal assaults.
[23] Norris was miffed that he had not been allowed to join the GARBC, which Ketcham and other leaders thought he might try to manipulate for the benefit of his own programs and eccentric personality.
[24] In the pages of his Fundamentalist, Norris even attacked Ketcham's daughter, Lois Moffat, for having left the mission field, although she had arrived in the United States near death and remained hospitalized and gravely ill for months.
Eventually Ketcham's Waterloo church offered to put all its resources at his disposal so that he could sue Norris for libel and slander.
For instance, in 1954, Alan Redpath, pastor of Moody Memorial Church, issued a statement declaring that liberals and fundamentalists should unite "in one great army for Christ."