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Fourth Crisis. In 1924, Dr. Fosdick had been for some years a professor at Manhattan's First Presbyterian Church. Terrified by the advance of "Liberalism," conservative Presbyterians led by William Jennings Bryan, et al. styled themselves Fundamentalists and launched an attack to drive from the church all who did not subscribe literally to a few "fundamentals" such as Virgin Birth of Christ. Astute, they concentrated on Dr. Fosdick, since he was a Baptist and since, there- fore, they might win a victory by ousting him from a Presbyterian pulpit without actually having a "heresy" trial in which they were by no means sure of even legalistic success. This made Dr. Fosdick the spokesman of non-Literalist Christianity. Upon him devolved the duty of presenting a "reasonable" Christianity which was not merely a milk & water diet of ethical excellencies. This crisis does not pass. And because it does not pass Dr. Fosdick can pack any church anywhere any time.
A few months ago, Dr. Fosdick became for a moment autobiographical, reminisced of his youth: "We roamed the woods, fished the streams, built our shanties by the brookside. . . ." Those, it might be said, were the old days when Faith was simple, when, despite the fast inrush of science and technology, the Church was a power in society. Today that power is everywhere threatened—not by persecution, but by indifference. In the most unchurched of educated communities in an increasingly unchurchlike world, Dr. Fosdick has caused to be raised on the banks of the magnificent Hudson a magnificent church. To voice its presence to surrounding multitudes John Davison Rockefeller Jr. has set in its tower 72 bells, world's largest and heaviest carillon. (The Park Avenue Baptist, predecessor of Riverside Church, had only 53.) Their invitation Dr. Fosdick expressed in a great exordium:
"Let the youth of our day pass all the outworks of religion into its very citadel, into the presence of Jesus Christ Himself, what He was, what He stood for, and be challenged with that voice which long ago thundered, 'Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart and . . . thy neighbor as thyself.' "