In 1952, Bert Harrison was a new preacher at the Oak Street Baptist Church in Ponca City, Oklahoma,[i] and the Revised Standard Version was a new Bible. Harrison and the Oak Street Church – an “Independent Fundamental Missionary” Baptist Church – wasted no time in opposing it. On September 24th, a journalist reported on the upcoming community-wide commemoration of the RSV on Tuesday, September 30, sponsored by the Ponca City Ministerial Alliance. On Wednesday, October 1st, the Oak Street Church placed this advertisement in the Ponca City News:
Then on October 19th, the church placed this warning in a newspaper advertisement, with a clear statement on their sole use of the King James Bible:
Walter Bert Harrison was born September 3, 1924 in Hale Center, Texas, and grew up in Chickasha, Oklahoma, graduating from the High School there in 1942. Harrison was honorably discharged from the U.S. Navy in 1946, having served 24 months in the Pacific theater. He enrolled at the Baptist Bible College in Springfield, Missouri in 1950, and was pastoring in Ponca City by March of 1952. Bert Harrison pastored several churches, including 29 years at the Southwest Baptist Church in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. He died October 26, 1997, as is buried at the Pioneer Cemetery in Norge, Grady County, Oklahoma
No longer on Oak Street, the former Oak Street Baptist Church of Ponca City is now called Central Baptist Church. The church still stands for the King James Version as the Bible for English-speakers, and uses only it in the pulpit and in classes.
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