page_title: Donald B. Fullerton
section_title: Founding PEF
hierarchical_section_title: Donald B. Fullerton / Leading the Princeton Evangelical Fellowship / Founding PEF
caption_attribution_description: English: Dr. Fullerton, the founder of the Princeton Evangelical Fellowship, at the P-Rade.
context_page_description: Donald B. Fullerton was a Christian missionary and teacher who founded the Princeton Christian Fellowship, called the Princeton Evangelical Fellowship until 2017, and served with it from 1931 until 1980. He was noted for convincing many students at Princeton University of the truth of the Christian faith. Arthur Glasser also credited his conversion to Dr. Fullerton, through hearing him speak at the Keswick Bible Conference. In addition to his evangelistic efforts, Dr. Fullerton was a major spiritual influence on many students including Paul Pressler, a major figure in the Conservative resurgence of the Southern Baptist Convention, and the noted Reformed theologian John Frame. He was a member of the Princeton University Class of 1913 and received an honorary Doctorate of Ministry from Grace Theological Seminary.
context_section_description: Dr. Fullerton attempted to return to the mission field in 1929 despite his health troubles, sailing out on the RMS Mauretania. Before the ship sailed he prayed that the ship would be turned around if it was not God's will that he return to India. The Mauretania collided with a car float while still in New York harbor and the ship was forced to return to port. Fullerton disembarked, never to return overseas, and spent a short time teaching at J. Oliver Buswell's National Bible Institute in New York. In 1930 the Philadelphian Society, which had served as the focus of evangelical student life at Princeton University since 1825, went defunct amid the Fundamentalist–Modernist Controversy. In 1931 the parent of a Princeton student, worried over the lack of evangelical ministry at the university, called Dr. Fullerton to ask him to start Bible classes with students, classes he would continue into the 1970s.
  In 1937 the Bible classes led by Dr. Fullerton developed into a formal student organization, the Princeton Evangelical Fellowship. The first undergraduate president of the PEF, Archibald Fletcher of the Princeton Class of 1938, wrote to The Daily Princetonian that:
  The purpose of this Fellowship shall be to provide an opportunity for students at Princeton University to enjoy Christian fellowship one with another, to bear united witness to the faith of its members in the whole Bible as the inspired Word of God and to encourage other students to take, with them, a definite stand for Christ on the Campus.
caption: Dr. Fullerton (right) at the P-Rade (date uncertain, likely late 1970s).
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