My Time with Harry Emerson Fosdick

My Time with Harry Emerson Fosdick
By Hardy Clemons

    To look back now and realize how close I came to never really meeting Dr. Fosdick is astonishing. The academic catalogue at my former seminary mandated that a dissertation “must make an original contribution to the field in which it is written.“ That seemed a daunting expectation to me. Who was I, in my twenties, to make such an effort?

   After considerable struggle, I decided: How better to fulfill that task than to write on the theology of Harry Emerson Fosdick, the Father of Modern Preaching?[1] His stated goal was “to make a spiritual contribution to his generation?” He was a genius in diving deep into complex theology and coming up with clear insights and illustrations that laity would appreciate. Then he set forth challenges to live out faith in moral and ethical Christian behavior. He was truly a proclaimer of good news—a genuine preacher.

   Fosdick drank deeply in college from the well of his professor, William Newton Clarke. Clarke taught the bright young student that faith is somewhat like astronomy: “The starts abide, but astronomies are constantly changing.” That’s what theology does, in biblical times, historical times, and now. Fosdick said of Clarke:

I didn’t swallow everything he said.  He wouldn’t have allowed that. . . . But, He made essential religion live again for me, real and vital.  . . . To use his own comparison, he was sure the stars were there, though we had to change our astronomy, and the flowers real, though botany might alter its explanations.[2]

   My fascination with and admiration of Dr. Fosdick began early. As a child I had the good fortune to hear him preach when my father was completing a Master’s degree at Columbia University. We lived on Riverside Drive near the church and worshipped there often. I even got to shake the great man’s hand in passing.

   Later, in college I read The Meaning of Prayer and On Being a Real Person with great profit.  These led me into some of his deeper works such as A Guide to Understanding the Bible, The Modern Use of the Bible (The Yale Lectures on Preaching in 1924), and his superior autobiography, For The Living of These Days.

   Fosdick became a hero and model to me. His belief that we didn’t have to check our minds at the door when we came to church inspired and shaped my own ministry. All this gave me a personal passion about my work on the dissertation. Nevertheless, it was an almost overwhelming assignment to get it approved.

   By his own admission Fosdick was neither a theologian nor an ethicist. Vocationally he was a scholarly, dynamic preacher and pastor of one of the most creative churches of that day. He was also a professor of practical theology at Union Theological Seminary across the street from the church.

   When I shared my intended title, “The Key Theological Ideas of Harry Emerson Fosdick,“ with my major professor, the venerable W. Boyd Hunt, he questioned its validity. “Fosdick is not a theologian,” Dr. Hunt said. “You must write on something or someone theological.”

   “However,” I responded, “his preaching, teaching and ethics are based on a solid, well-thought-out theology which Fosdick has simply never systematized.  He came to be recognized as one of the leading theological minds of our century[3], and my major is systematic theology. Furthermore,” I said, “my colleague and friend, C. W. Brister, had written a dissertation a few years earlier in the same graduate school on the Ethics of Fosdick.  Why wouldn’t one on his theology be as valid.”

   “OK then,” Boyd asked, “what if you contact Dr. Fosdick and ask what he thinks?”  

   So I did. Soon a hand-written letter came back. In brief he said, “I am flattered by your idea, but I agree with your professor.  I’m not a theologian.”

   “But, you have lived and worked on the basis of a well thought out theology that seems to me to cry out to be systematized,” I responded. And I mailed him my five- page prospectus.

   “OK,” Fosdick responded, “I see what you are saying; but it will cost you a lot of reading in strange places. I always intended to write about my theology more formally, but now at 86, I know I’ll never get it done. I’ll help you all I can, and my former secretary, Dorothy Noyes, is still at Riverside. I’m sure she will help.”

   So, with the approval of Dr. Fosdick, Dr. Hunt and the graduate committee, I launched into reading all his published books plus hundreds of articles and letters. My wife and I spent two weeks in New York to interview him about his theology. We met with him several mornings at their condo in Bronxville, where both he and his wife, Florence, graciously received us. Ardelle recorded our conversations in shorthand.

   Then we returned to either Riverside Church or the Union Library in the afternoons.  Ardelle transcribed her work and I poured through file after file of unpublished sermons, articles and letters. I found letters ranging from prisoners on death row to the legendary Reinhold Niebuhr and Dietrich Bonheoffer, who was Fosdick’s student at Union in the 30’s. I devoured Dear Mr. Brown: Letters to a Person Perplexed about Religion, which Fosdick graciously sent me shortly after it was published in 1961, right in the middle of my research.  This book is the closest Fosdick ever came toward articulating and organizing his theology

   Furthermore, I interviewed several of Fosdick’s colleagues and former students at Union. Scholars such as Robert Handy, President Henry Pitney Van Dusen, Robert McAfee Brown, John Bennett, and preachers like George Buttrick, Robert J. McCracken and Ralph Sockman. They all gave generous time and made excellent comments—sharing all the while wonderful “Fosdick stories.”

   An example: George Buttrick told me that one November some of the big steeple preachers in New York City were in a holding room, waiting to go to the platform for a Community Thanksgiving Worship, Ralph Sockman commented, “You know Harry, all of us are really fine preachers!  But when it comes to kicking the bung hole out of the barrel and letting it gurgle, none of us is your peer.”[4]

   I discovered a huge box in the stacks of Union library, that the library wasn’t aware of, crammed full of bundles of unpublished sermons and articles from Fosdick’s early days as pastor of First Baptist Church in Montclair, NJ. Often his Pastor’s columns in Montclair and Riverside were veritable theology lessons.

   As I write this on October 5, 2011, it is 133 years after Fosdick’s birth and the 42^nd anniversary of his death. Amazingly, his beloved wife pre-deceased him in 1963.  Sometime later, I felt a spiritual nudge to call Dr. Fosdick and inquire as to how he was doing.

   But, I wondered: Does someone like me really give “a pastoral call” to a legend like the “Father of Modern Preaching”?  That may be a little much? But, when I called, he answered the phone himself, his voice still strong and resilient. He remembered us and the letter of condolence Ardelle and I had sent when Florence died. He was obviously surprised and touched by my call–and most gracious as always.

   After we visited a bit, I ventured to ask, “What is it like for you sir to be in this sad, difficult passage of life?” His answer amazed and instructed me at a deep level. I have carried it with me like a treasure all these years. He said:

“Hardy, this is the hardest thing I have ever done!  I knew it would be hard, but never thought it would be THIS hard.  Since I was “the heart patient,” we always assumed I would go first. We had made all our plans accordingly.  So I was both shocked and surprised when Florence preceded me. Then he repeated, “I never knew it would be this hard!”

But then he said,

“I had a thought the other day that has lifted my spirit a bit. The idea occurred that if I had died first, Florence would be going through what I am now. A comforting meaning amid my pain swept over me like billows: THIS is something I can do for Florence! I am sparing her from the sadness of being the marriage partner who is left.”

   Fosdick was indeed, as his book challenges us to be, a real person. He was pilloried as a liberal, a modernist, and some even questioned whether he was a Christian. The word infidel was often used.

   I asked him as our interviews were coming to an end if there were any advantages to being nearly 90 years old. 

“O yes,” he said quickly. “I was attacked from both sides–for being too liberal and too conservative. Many liberals and humanists thought I preached too much from the Bible and took it much too seriously. Also, I was Rockefeller’s pastor and people said I had sold out to his money. I was seen as a coward because I claimed to embrace the Bible’s inspiration and avoided the word inerrancy. But I have taken a sort of perverse pleasure in the fact that I have outlived almost all of my attackers.”

“Furthermore, “ he said,

“Several papers and dissertations such as yours and our friend Brister’s have been done about my thought. I imagined I would be remembered only as the author of the hymn God of Grace and God of Glory, but I take heart in the fact that some think my work will be considered relevant beyond my death.”

   For myself I have indeed found him to still be most relevant. So, at the invitation of Christian Ethics Today I plan to offer at least one more article about what I have learned from this great believer and his theology, persona, preaching and teaching[6]

   Finally, I asked Dr. Fosdick if he was willing to share his view of his own death. He replied,

“I view it pretty much as I did being put to sleep recently when I had surgery. I really knew little about what they would do or what the outcome would be. Yet I entered peacefully because I said to myself, ‘I know my surgeon.’ With a view to my own death, I trust God even more.”

   As I look back to the day I submitted my dissertation in 1965, I am startled to realize that nearly half a century has gone by. In the twilight of my own life, as I take the old hymn seriously and “count my many blessings,” few of them rank as high as my time with Dr. Fosdick and our discussions about his faith and ministry.

   When I handed in the final draft, Dr. Hunt and I visited a while, and as we finished, he commented, “Hardy, you are one of the few students I have ever had that actually seemed sad that your paper is finished.” He was right! I enjoyed this experience immensely. It was rich, challenging, instructive and life changing.

Hardy Clemons is a Pastoral and Executive Coach who lives in San Antonio.

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