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This last is the true motto of the church. For, to Dr. Fosdick and to Mr. & Mrs. John Davison Rockefeller Jr., who have spared neither money ($4,000,000) nor thoughtful care for all details, the church is important only because of its prospective occupants. Who are they? They are students from every state and nation—tens of thousands who make upper Broadway near Riverside Drive the biggest student community (Columbia with all its schools, Barnard, Union Theological) in the U. S. They are, moreover, professors and friends of professors, thou- sands of educated people who live nearby and have jobs of more or less importance "down town." And, besides these, just people—one or two hundred thousand who live in tall medium-priced apartment houses within walking distance. Altogether it has been an "unchurched" community. The Episcopal Cathedral of St. John the Divine rises nearby and there is also a Fundamentalist Presbyterian church but otherwise there is little choice for Protestants. Dr. Fosdick proposes to give this educated community a place of greatest beauty for worship. He also proposes to serve the social needs of the somewhat lonely metropolite. Hence on a vast scale he has built all the accessories of a community church — gymnasium, assembly room for theatricals, dining rooms, etc., etc. He will have two assistant pastors besides many a staff worker.
In ten stories of the 22-story belltower are classrooms for the religious and social training of the young, from nurslings to college scholars. One floor is for the Women's Society's sewing room, another for the Women's Bible Class. Dr. Fosdick's study and conference rooms are on the 18th floor, richly decorated. Simple, but more massive in furniture is the floor above where the board of trustees meet— Edward Lathrop Ballard, fire insurance executive, president; John Davison Rockefeller III, who as secretary writes the chronicles; his father; his uncle Winthrop Williams Aldrich; et al. Not all of them rich, not all of them powerful, but all of them sociologically minded.
To understand this vast "inclusive" church, it is necessary to know the man who inspired it and who as long as he is there, will be its centre of inspiration, the 5 2-year-old man who is without doubt the most famed living Protestant preacher. Tens of thousands have heard him, millions have read him, hundreds have bared their hearts to him in private "confes-sional," but his own life is little known. Briefly, the record:
First Crisis. Harry Emerson Fosdick met his first spiritual crisis at the age of seven, when he experienced conversion and determined to become a foreign missionary. The circumstance was astounding only to himself, for his family and environment were religious. Foretaste of the interdenominationalism which he was to make world-famed, he had been baptized a Baptist (by immersion), later attended a Presbyterian Sunday School and a Methodist young people's society.