Harry Emerson Fosdick

• 1. Introduction

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  On the 21st of May 1922, the American pastor Harry Emerson Fosdick preached in Manhattan's West Village. His sermon carried a title shaped like a challenge: Shall the Fundamentalists Win? The question did not stay in that pulpit. By 1924, Fosdick had left the pulpit where he delivered it. Fosdick lived from 1878 to 1969, and few liberal ministers of his era were better known. Why did one sermon set off a fight that reached the highest councils of a denomination? How did a Baptist come to be preaching in a Presbyterian church? And what did Fosdick build after leaving that pulpit?

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• 2. Buffalo to the Front

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  Buffalo, New York, is where Fosdick was born on the 24th of May 1878. He graduated from Colgate University in 1900 and joined the Delta Upsilon fraternity while he was there. He finished at Union Theological Seminary in 1904.

  Madison Avenue Baptist Church, at 31st Street in Manhattan, ordained him in 1903. A year later, First Baptist Church in Montclair, New Jersey, called him as its minister, and he served there until 1915.

  In 1917, Fosdick volunteered as an Army chaplain and served in France. He had supported US participation in the First World War, and he later called himself a "gullible fool" for that support.

  In 1918, First Presbyterian Church in New York called him to its pulpit.

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• 3. Argument and Reply

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  At the heart of the 1922 sermon was a claim about the Bible. Fosdick described it as a record of the unfolding of God's will, not as the literal "Word of God." He applied the same logic to Christianity itself, whose history he saw as one of development, progress, and gradual change. Fundamentalists regarded that view as "rank apostasy," and the battle lines were drawn. That clash, the fundamentalist-modernist controversy, would keep Fosdick at the center of American Protestantism through the 1920s and 1930s.

  On the 13th of July 1922, the Rev. Clarence Edward Macartney of Arch Street Presbyterian Church in Philadelphia replied with a sermon titled "Shall Unbelief Win?" Like Fosdick's, it was published and sent to church leaders across America.

  Macartney aimed part of his sermon at readers who rejected both labels. Many people, he said, think of themselves not as "Fundamentalists" or "Modernists" but as Christians, striving amid "the dust and the confused clamor of this life." He expected such readers to take his sermon "with sorrow and pain."

  Church leaders who received those printed sermons soon had more than reading to do.

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• 4. The Investigation

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  In 1923, the General Assembly of the old Presbyterian Church in the USA held its national convention and directed Fosdick's local presbytery in New York to look into his views. A commission opened an investigation, as church rules required.

  John Foster Dulles, a lay elder, conducted Fosdick's defense. Dulles lived from 1888 to 1959 and later served as Secretary of State under President Dwight D. Eisenhower in the 1950s. His father was a well-known liberal Presbyterian seminary professor.

  A formal trial before the 1924 General Assembly would probably have ended in censure. Fosdick escaped it by resigning in 1924 from the pulpit of First Presbyterian, the historic church known as Old First.

  Park Avenue Baptist Church called him immediately afterward, as pastor of what was described as a new type of Baptist ministry. That church's most famous member would soon change the shape of Fosdick's career.

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• 5. Rockefeller Money

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  John D. Rockefeller Jr., the industrialist, financier, and philanthropist, funded two projects linked to Fosdick. The first was a direct-mail effort for the 1922 sermon. Rockefeller paid for nationwide distribution of Shall the Fundamentalists Win? under a more cautious title, The New Knowledge and the Christian Faith.

  Ivy Lee designed that mailing. Lee had worked since 1914 as an independent public relations contractor for the Rockefellers.

  Fosdick's brother Raymond ran the Rockefeller Foundation for three decades, starting in 1921. He was essentially in charge of philanthropy for Rockefeller.

  The second project was Riverside Church, which Rockefeller funded in Manhattan's Morningside Heights, near Columbia University. Fosdick became its pastor as soon as the doors opened in October 1930.

  Time ran a cover story on the 6th of October 1930, and it described Fosdick's aims. He wanted to give an educated community "a place of greatest beauty for worship," and he also meant to serve the social needs of the lonely city dweller. On a vast scale, he built the accessories of a community church: a gymnasium, an assembly room for theatricals, and dining rooms. Ten stories of the 22-story bell tower held classrooms for the religious and social training of the young.

  Riverside would later become a member of two denominations, the American Baptist Churches and the United Church of Christ.

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• 6. Voice and Pen

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  From 1927 to 1946, Fosdick was the preacher on National Vespers, a program carried by NBC Blue. The BBC broadcast his radio addresses nationally as well.

  Riverside Sermons was printed in 1958, one of numerous books he published. He also wrote the hymn "God of Grace and God of Glory."

  A Guide to Understanding the Bible, published in 1938, follows the beliefs of the people who wrote the Bible. It starts with the ancient beliefs of the Hebrews, which Fosdick regarded as practically pagan. It ends with the faith and hopes of the New Testament writers.

  The Second Mile, from 1908, opens the long list of his books. Titles such as The Meaning of Prayer, On Being a Real Person, and The Man from Nazareth followed over the decades. In 1956 he published an autobiography, The Living of These Days.

  An anthology titled Harry Emerson Fosdick's Art of Preaching appeared in 1971, after his death.

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• 7. Causes and Convictions

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  Fosdick spoke out against racism and injustice, and Ruby Bates gave him credit for a decision in the 1933 Scottsboro retrial. The case tried nine black youths before all-white juries for allegedly raping white women. Bates and her companion, Victoria Price, were the two women involved. Bates credited Fosdick with persuading her to testify for the defense.

  Fosdick preached an anti-war sermon in 1933 titled "The Unknown Soldier." It inspired the British priest Dick Sheppard to write a letter. That letter ultimately led to the founding of the Peace Pledge Union.

  William Jennings Bryan, a creationist, became Fosdick's opponent in a dispute over evolution. Fosdick advocated theistic evolution, defended the teaching of evolution in schools, and rejected creationism. His 1922 work Evolution and Mr. Bryan carries the quarrel in its title.

  Fosdick belonged to the American Friends of the Middle East and helped found the Committee for Justice and Peace in the Holy Land. He was an active "anti-Zionist."

  In 1939, Fosdick reviewed the first edition of a new book and gave it his approval. Its title was Alcoholics Anonymous: The Story of How More Than One Hundred Men Have Recovered from Alcoholism. Members of Alcoholics Anonymous point to that review as significant in the development of their movement.

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• 8. Legacy and Kin

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  Martin Luther King Jr. called Fosdick "the greatest preacher of this century." King drew on Fosdick's writings and sermons for some of his own sermons.

  Dorothy Fosdick, his daughter, worked as foreign policy adviser to Henry M. "Scoop" Jackson, a United States Senator from Washington state. She also wrote a number of books.

  Charles Austin Fosdick, his uncle, wrote popular adventure books for boys under the pen name Harry Castlemon. That pen name gave the uncle the same first name as his nephew.

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