indication that the balance of strength had swung to the liberal side.15 Other signs of the fundamentalists’ decline were also evident in their failure to control the church’s institutions. In the 1890s, the Presbyterian Church complained to one of its seminaries, Union Seminary in New York City, about the teaching of an Old Testament professor, Charles Briggs, and ordered the seminary to dismiss him. Instead, the seminary chose to retain Briggs and sever its ties with the Presbyterian Church.16