In the early 1920s Riley promoted a vigorous anti-evolutionary campaign in the Northwest and it was Riley's World Christian Fundamentals Association that wired William Jennings Bryan urging him to act as counsel for the association in the Scopes Trial.
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Theologically, Riley was a Baptist traditionalist who believed in the New Hampshire Confession of Faith of 1833, the most popular Baptist creed of the 19th century.
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After teaching in county schools, he attended college in Hanover, Indiana, where he received an A.B. degree in 1885.
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William Bell Riley (March 22, 1861 in Greene County, Indiana, USA – December 5, 1947 in Minneapolis, Minnesota) was known as "The Grand Old Man of Fundamentalism."
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When the Anti-Evolution League of Minnesota founded by the dynamic William Bell Riley of the First Baptist Church, Minneapolis, Minnesota, blossomed into the Anti-Evolution League of America in 1923, it was with Kentucky preacher Dr. J. W. Porter as president and Martin as field secretary and editor of the organization's official organ, The Conflict.