Who is harry fosdick

He developed an early interest in theology and chose to pursue ministerial training at Colgate Divinity School where he was influenced by William Newton Clarke, an early advocate of the social gospel. Upon graduating from Colgate he continued to Union Theological Seminary.

In he accepted his first pastorate at First Baptist Church in Montclair, New Jersey, and four years later also accepted a faculty position at Union where he was to teach until In Fosdick was asked to become associate pastor at First Presbyterian Church in New York City, though he was allowed to retain his baptistic convictions.

He quickly gained a reputation as a leading Christian voice, and hundreds and then thousands descended on First Presbyterian to hear his sermons. He decried the fundamentalists as being intolerant for demanding adherence to doctrines that science, reason, and a modern world could no longer sustain.

John D. Rockefeller enjoyed this sermon so much that he had , copies printed and mailed to every Protestant pastor in the nation. We need to be clear that we cannot import into this battle a twenty-first century understanding of fundamentalism.

When Fosdick battled the fundamentalists of his day, he battled nothing less than traditional or conservative Christianity. Fundamentalists were those who insisted upon the key tenets of historic, orthodox Christianity—what they defined as the fundamental doctrines of the faith.

Fosdick was by no means the only liberal theologian of his day, but he was the one to gain the widest acclaim and the broadest platform.

While many others were pressing theological liberalism in the seminaries and the halls of academia, Fosdick was on the radio waves and in the bookstores, taking his message to the common people.

His voice extended through his radio program, The National Vespers Hour, which was broadcast in the Northern and Eastern United States, and through many bestselling books which eventually sold in the millions. On two separate occasions he was on the cover of TIME magazine.

His stand for liberalism put him at odds with many of the conservative voices in Presbyterianism, and this led him to leave First Presbyterian Church in and to go instead to Park Avenue Baptist Church. QuickLists Using the best available data, the following lists provide data on American and international religion in rank order.

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Baptist oil baron John D. Rockefeller, the wealthiest man in the nation, loved it and paid for some , copies to be printed and distributed to every Protestant minister in the United States.

What had been up to this time a series of skirmishes between fundamentalists and liberals now exploded into war. Debate raged across the nation, with prominent periodicals taking sides. Fosdick tried to be conciliatory, but he refused to budge theologically or become a Presbyterian to retain his pulpit. By he felt compelled to resign. In May of the following year, he became pastor of Park Avenue Baptist Church in New York, and then moved on to newly built thanks to Rockefeller money Riverside Church, a modern Gothic cathedral seating over 2, For the last 16 years of his active ministry, and for the following 28 of his retirement, it was Fosdick's church home, where he practiced his liberal values for example, offering worship in a variety of styles, from Quaker style to high church and speaking out on key issues of the day he was a champion of civil liberties, for instance, and invited blacks to preach from his pulpit.

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