Posted on 10/18/2006 12:49:53 PM PDT by Free ThinkerNY
"Is Riverside one of those new mega-churches usually referred to as
"worship centers" and mostly specializing in humanist solutions and
a disdain for the cross of Christ and the gospel. "
Uuhh, yep.
Good, concise background in the article linked below.
Also, I did read the NYTimes article mentioned about the $10 million
supposedly missing from the church treasury (sorry I don't have a copy)
http://news.ucc.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=666&Itemid=1
(excerpt)
...Still others have said the Forbes era has been marked by financial mismanagement and even took the church leadership to court, alleging $10 million in church funds had been lost, according to The New York Times.
Rmlew, did these folks ever try to proselytize at Columbia?
did it? I thought rockefeller was behind it and integrated it at a time when that was unthinkable.
Still a beautiful building.
Thanks, but as our 'good friends' over at Media Matters say, it was "nothing."
http://mediamatters.org/items/200608020003
Of course, as you can see by this link they do seem to have their panties in a bunch over Horowitz's and Poe's article though they spend their time fretting about the methods rather than the information.
The Lyndon LaRouche insult was cute- if you ever want to know what these progressive Dems are up to, look at what they allege about you.
I am sure that St. Hillary Clinton worships at the altar of Lynne Stewart. Those two deserve each other.
Typical smoke and mirrors. They can't dispute that OSI funded Stewart's defense fund, so they divert attention from that fact with an ad hominem attack on Horowitz and Poe for crediting the source of a lead, which in Media Matters' eyes is evidently a much more serious offense than funding a terrorist coconspirator.
Prominent Protestant. Harry Emerson Fosdick was one of the major voices of liberal Protestantism in the middle of the twentieth century. As pastor of the spectacular, nondenominational Riverside Church in New York City and as the leading Protestant speaker on radio, he helped to define the personality and meaning of mainline Protestantism for thirty years. Through his collected sermons, his public stands on issues, and his radio services, Harry Emerson Fosdick became not only the best-known preacher of his day but also a representative of the modernist forces that struggled with Fundamentalists during the 1920s.
Early Recognition. Fosdick was born in upstate New York and entered the Baptist ministry after graduating from Union Theological Seminary in New York. His talents and abilities were quickly recognized. He became professor of practical theology at Union in 1911 and taught there until he retired in 1946. In 1919 the dwindling congregations of the First Presbyterian Church in New York City, the University Place Presbyterian Church, and the Madison Square Presbyterian Church agreed to merge to concentrate their combined resources and efforts. Fosdick, a graduate of Colgate College and Union Theological Seminary in New York and already widely known for his sermons, was asked to become the congregation's preaching minster. The fact that he was and would remain a Baptist in this Presbyterian church was considered irrelevant.
Success and Publicity. Fosdick's services attracted large crowds, and the experiment seemed a splendid success. In 1922 Fosdick entered the growing war between the increasingly militant Fundamentalists and the modernists. In his sermon "Shall the Fundamentalists Win?" he condemned the exclusionary practices of the Fundamentalists and pleaded for a church where individual beliefs on issues such as the virgin birth of Jesus, the inerrancy of the Scriptures, and the question of the Second Coming of Christ were left to individual interpretation while all Christians worked together for the common good. The sermon attracted extensive publicity, particularly after public-relations man Ivy Lee republished it as "New Knowledge and Christian Faith" and distributed it to the nation's Protestant clergy.
Contention. The line between Fundamentalists and modernists was now drawn in the northern Presbyterian Church. Fundamentalists and their conservatives allies, particularly the faculty of the denomination's Princeton Theological Seminary at Princeton University, responded with outrage. Not only was Fosdick unsound in doctrine, he was an interloper in one of the denomination's leading congregations. For the next two years the issue of Fosdick and his place in the denomination was fought at meetings of the various governing bodies of the Presbyterian Church, including the annual meetings of the General Assembly, the church's governing body. Here Fosdick's rejection of the Five Points of Fundamentalist belief was condemned by a large minority of the delegates, but church governance would not allow the annual body to remove him from his congregation.
Resignation. The New York Presbytery tried to protect Fosdick, as did First Presbyterian Church, which adamantly refused his offer to resign. In 1925 a seeming compromise was reached: the New York Presbytery proposed that Fosdick join the denomination and regularize his relationship with the church and his congregation. On the surface this would resolve the issue of Fosdick's denominational loyalties; but as a Presbyterian, he would also be subject to denominational control, and some sort of heresy trial was likely if he accepted that route. Fosdick concluded that the Fundamentalists would eventually expel him, and he resigned from First Presbyterian in March 1925.
Moving On. Fosdick was more than a symbol--he was a brilliant preacher. As the controversy whirled, a new pulpit was found for him. He was offered the ministry of the Park Avenue Baptist Church, also in New York City, a congregation that included some of the nation's leading businessmen, including John D. Rockefeller Jr. The congregation had completed an expensive new sanctuary in 1922. In negotiations with the directors of the church, Fosdick insisted that the church modify its requirement that only those who had been baptized by immersion be accepted for membership, a tenet that had long been a key principle of Baptists. Park Avenue Baptist agreed to open admission, and the offer was sweetened when Rockefeller offered to provide much of the funding for a sanctuary in Morningside Heights, outside the silk-stocking district of the city, to create a church inclusive in class as well as in doctrine.
Becoming Established. Fosdick later recalled that in his talks with Rockefeller in regard to the move, he speculated about the effects of his relationship with one of the world's richest men. Rockefeller responded, "Do you think more people will criticize you on account of my wealth, than will criticize me on account of your theology?" The agreement to create an interdenominational Protestant church was made. The building on Park Avenue was sold, and the money from the sale, combined with a generous gift from Rockefeller, led to the construction of the great Riverside Church in Morningside Heights in New York. The new sanctuary was officially opened in 1930 and remained Fosdick's home and the location of the studio for his popular radio services until his retirement.While his congregation supported Fosdick, he decided to accept an offer to pastor the Park Avenue Baptist Church. That congregation then decided to move to a new sanctuary to be built on Riverside Heights near Union and Columbia University. The Riverside Church, which was generously supported by John D. Rockefeller Jr., was dedicated in 1930.
*****
Bonhoeffer knew that the tepid liberal preaching at Riverside was extremely unlikely to meet with his approval, much less be a conduit by which God would speak to him about his situation. But he could not live a hundred yards away and not visit...
Riverside was the church Rockefeller had built for Harry Emerson Fosdick, which had opened to such fanfare in 1930. In 1939, Fosdick was still the most famous liberal preacher in America, and Riverside was America's premier pulpit of theological liberalism. Bonhoeffer was in a mood to hear God in the preaching of his Word, even if it was not in the precise form which he liked. But he was in no mood for what he heard that morning at Riverside. The text for the sermon was from James, but not James of the New Testament. It was from the American philosopher William James, whose works Bonhoeffer had studied nine years earlier. The usually exceedingly gracious and tolerant Bonhoeffer had been aching for something of God, but he had come to the wrong place. In his diary he wrote,"Quite unbearable." The empty preaching set him off, and he poured his disgust into his diary:
The whole thing was a respectable, self-indulgent, self-satisfied religious celebration. This sort of idolatrous religion stirs up the flesh which is accustomed to being kept in check by the Word of God. Such sermons make for libertinism, egotism, indifference. Do people not know that one can get on as well, even better, without "religion?" ...... So again he ... walked south on Broadway, seven blocks, to another church. The preacher at this church, Dr. McComb, was reviled as a fundamentalist by Fosdick and the others up the street. But what Bonhoeffer found there thrilled him:
Perhaps the Anglo-Saxons are really more religious than we are, but they are certainly not more Christian, at least, if they still have sermons like that. I have no doubt at all that one day the storm will blow with full force on this religious hand-out, if God himself is still anywhere on the scene....The tasks for a real theologian over here are immeasurable. But only an American himself can shift all this rubbish, and up till now there do not seem to be any about.
...A completely Biblical sermon..."To have found Biblical preaching om New York City, and on this day of all days,when he was desperately trying to hear God's voice [should he stay in America or go back to Germany], was an answer to his prayers. Here, in this "fundamentalist" Presbyterian Church on Broadway, he heard God's word preached. At this critical juncture he did something he had never done before: he took a stand with the so-called fundamentalists against their adversaries at Riverside and Union. Referring to McComb's church, he declared,
"This will one day be a center of resistance when Riverside Church has long since become a temple of Baal. ..."
He repented of the anti-Americanism stirring in him over the last days and boldly equated the fundamentalists with the Confessing Church. Here they were fighting the corrupting influences of the theologians at Union and Riverside, and at home the fight was against the Reich church. ...
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