544 - Harry Emerson Fosdick: Preacher, Pastor, Prophet

Harry Emerson Fosdick:
Preacher, Pastor, Prophet
By Robert Moats Miller
New York, Oxford University Press, 1985. 608 pp. $34.50.

When Harry Emerson Fosdick retired from the pulpit of Riverside Church and the faculty of Union Theological Seminary in New York City in 1946, James Muilenberg, a faculty colleague, observed to a group of students (of which I was one) that the significance and scope of Fosdick's ministry were yet to be realized. He believed it would rank as twentieth-century American Protestantism's most portentous. Robert Moats Miller, Professor of History at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, has provided in Harry Emerson Fosdick a thoroughly researched, well-written biography which supports Muilenberg's view.

The 1946 retirement was no withdrawal from the arena of social, ethical, and political concern for Fosdick, but more accurately, a

546 - Harry Emerson Fosdick: Preacher, Pastor, Prophet

transition in a ministerial career that continued another twenty-three years until his death in 1969 at the age of 91. He remained actively involved and concerned with the world's life to the extent that a diminishing physical capacity permitted. He protested American involvement in Vietnam in letters to President Kennedy and The New York Times, and just months prior to his death he wrote to a friend: "This monstrous war in Vietnam is one of the most tragic and deplorable mistakes in all our American history. Strength to all of you who are speaking out against it! I am powerless to help now and can only pray for you." A similar candor of expression marked Fosdick's ministry at all points: President Wilson's reluctance to involve the American nation in World War I, the Senate's unwillingness to support the League of Nations, the attempt of fundamentalist Presbyterians to impose their interpretations on Protestantism, and John D. Rockefeller, Jr.'s, rare challenges to a pulpit interpretation of American business practices. Whatever the issue, Fosdick's word was seldom irresponsible, always forthright, and spoken in Christian love. He never hesitated to call it as he. saw it.

The reputation as preacher and spokesman for liberal Protestantism was firmly established before 1927, when Harry Emerson Fosdick ventured into the field of radio. With typical openness of mind and courage of conviction, he recognized the potential for Christian proclamation of substantative faith that might be realized in the new medium of national communication. For nineteen years, his voice was a part of early Sunday evening listening on "National Vespers; the flagship of radio Protestant broadcasting." A letter from a Wisconsin clergyman testified to Fosdick's undeniable genius for conveying to his listeners a sense that he was "bowling down my alley," an accolade fledgling homiletic students cherished from him in seminary classes. "The appeal of your sermon," wrote the clergyman, "is in the fact that it lives where I live, it grapples with the thoughts and problems with which I must grapple, and it doesn't meet my doubts by scolding but by articulating my dilemma and showing me 'a more excellent way."'

The guiding principle for sermons that spoke with cogency to a myriad of concerns (not only religious, but social, cultural, and personal also) had been settled on in Fosdick's first pastorate in Montclair, New Jersey. In what Miller terms "a linchpin sentence," the preacher later articulated his understanding of the sermon's role: "Every sermon should have as its business the head-on constructive meeting of some problem that was puzzling the minds, burdening the consciences, distracting lives, and no sermon which so met a real human difficulty, with light to throw on it and help to win a victory over it, could possibly be futile."

Preaching was but one of his several talents. He was a seminary teacher for 38 years to generations of appreciative students, and this biography gives a list of "Fosdick's homiletic suggestions [that] became legendary among his former students." He also taught biblical interpretation

547 - Harry Emerson Fosdick: Preacher, Pastor, Prophet

at Union, and less well-known is the strong emphasis on teaching in his parish ministry, particularly at Riverside Church, where Wednesday evening lectures attracted large, diverse audiences and were the basis for some of this books, for example, A Guide to Understanding the Bible. He devoted untold hours to personal pastoral counseling and to a ministry of personal letters to individuals. An astonishing number of these were handwritten and remain cherished possessions of their recipients. He authored or edited nearly fifty books and wrote, according to Miller's count, 1,000 articles for a wide range of periodicals, among which were the Atlantic Monthly, the Ladies Home Journal, the Christian Century, to give some sense of the diversity. He associated himself with any number of groups concerned for the betterment of social conditions: the ACLU, the NAACP, the Planned Parenthood Association, the Fellowship of Reconciliation, to cite only four of the many whose purposes he supported. From its inception, he was especially enthusiastic about the program of Alcoholics Anonymous.

In establishing the amazing sweep of Fosdick's ministry, Miller's work evokes the question of where this preacher found the time and stamina for it all. His stewardship of talent and time is awesome. He was a person of strong resolve, inner discipline, and diligence that were combined with a genuine sensitivity and warm personal regard for others. This study looks to his early years in upstate New York and to his marriage and family life that supplied so much strength to his being. It deals perceptively with the emotional breakdown in Fosdick's student years that led him to both insight and understanding of others similarly afflicted. Miller concludes, after his ten years of research and study, that Harry Fosdick was "an admirable human being." Although few "warts" were turned up, those that were have been included.

Throughout, Miller relates Fosdick's ministry to the historical context in which a particular focus occurred. As a historian, he provides background that is helpful and faithful to Fosdick's conviction "that theologies are culturally conditioned." This format is especially helpful in understanding changes in Fosdick's thought. For example, events of the 1930s stimulated a sermon, "The Church Must Go Beyond Modernism," described by one appraiser as "an unexpected depth charge into the sea of theology." It signaled a recognition of liberal theology's deficiencies and an increasing appreciation of the emerging neoorthodoxy of his colleague and friend, Reinhold Niebuhr--but only an appreciation, not a conversion.

Certain of Fosdick's concerns are given larger attention than others: the dedication to world peace, the controversy with Presbyterian fundamentalists while he was at First Presbyterian Church in New York City, his early interest in pastoral counseling as valid ministry. This is fitting; all of these were of primary concern to him. But Miller has neglected no area of Fosdick's life in this complete study, and while he disqualifies himself as able to do justice to the theological dimensions of Fosdick's thought, what he provides is adequate to an understanding of where the

548 - Harry Emerson Fosdick: Preacher, Pastor, Prophet

preacher stood in relation to the dominant trends in the theological climate in which he toiled. Furthermore, Harry Emerson Fosdick offered himself as an interpreter of the faith, not as a systematic theologian. In only a few cases has Miller given an extended exposition of a particular work, The Meaning of Prayer, for example, in which he discusses both its strengths and its weaknesses.

Harry Emerson Fosdick is offered without footnotes, although explanations are provided when needed for clarification. Whether or not their absence is a deficiency may rest on personal preference of the reader. It does eliminate the temptation to offer as a primary source what is gleaned from a secondary one, a temptation incidentally, to which the eminent preacher was not immune on occasion. In place of footnotes, a very complete "Essay on Sources" has been included.

Robert Moats Miller identifies himself as a "general historian of the twentieth-century United States," but does not claim credentials as "a church historian or historian of religion." Although he may feel comfortable with such a disclaimer, his excellent, readable, perceptive, and sensitive biography of Harry Emerson Fosdick is a major contribution to the field of American church history.

John Brown Macnab
First Presbyterian Church
New York, New York