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Battle for the Soul of a City: John Roach Straton, Harry Emerson Fosdick, and the Fundamentalist-Modernist Controversy in New York, 1922–1935

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  31 August 2021

Wallace Best
Wallace Best*
Affiliation:
Departments of Religion and African American Studies, Faculty Affiliate of the Department of History, Princeton University, Princeton, New Jersey, USA
*
*Corresponding author. E-mail: [email protected]
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Abstract

The Fundamentalist-Modernist Controversy was a defining moment for New York in the 1920s and one of the most significant theological battles in the city's history, as key doctrines of the Christian tradition such as the Virgin Birth, the Atonement, and the bodily resurrection of Christ were debated in the mainstream as well as the religious press. The principal figures in the controversy were John Roach Straton and Harry Emerson Fosdick, two prominent clerics whose intellectual and oratorical confrontation showed just how deep this nationwide religious divide had become. Straton and Fosdick used their New York pulpits as public platforms to articulate their opposing theological visions and to justify them as the correct expression of historic Christianity in the present. In doing so, they made the Fundamentalist-Modernist Controversy very much a New York story, remapping the city's Protestant evangelical culture and reorienting one of the most important episodes in American religious history. The aftermath of the conflict, however, reveals that the lines between “fundamentalist” and “modernist” as distinct categories of religious experience became blurred as each embraced elements of the other. By 1935, both fundamentalists and modernists in New York City had been transformed, just as they had transformed the city.

Keywords

FundamentalistModernistNew York CityLiberalismTheological Debate
Type
Research Article
Information
Church History , Volume 90 , Issue 2 , June 2021 , pp. 367 - 397
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2021. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of American Society of Church History

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References

1 Butler, Jon, “Religion in New York City: Faith That Could Not Be,” U.S. Catholic Historian 22, no. 2 (Spring 2004): 53Google Scholar.

2 On the history, as well as the historical and theological impact of the Scopes trial, see Larson, Edward J., Summer for the Gods: The Scopes Trial and America's Continuing Debate over Science and Religion (New York: Basic Books, 1997)Google Scholar; Werner, M. R., Bryan (New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1929), 281–359Google Scholar; Koenig, Louis W., Bryan: A Political Biography of William Jennings Bryan (New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1971), 629–660Google Scholar; Leinwand, Gerald, William Jennings Bryan: An Uncertain Trumpet (New York: Rowman & Littlefield, 2007), 139–171Google Scholar; Wilson, Charles Morrow, The Commoner William Jennings Bryan (New York: Doubleday, 1970), 413–439Google Scholar; Kazin, Michael, A Godly Hero: The Life of William Jennings Bryan (New York: Knopf, 2006)Google Scholar; and Bowler, Peter J., Monkey Trials and Gorilla Sermons: Evolution and Christianity from Darwin to Intelligent Design (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2007), 181–186CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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4 Giordano, Satan and the Dancehall, 5. See also Luther H. Gulick, “Popular Recreation and Public Morality,” Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Sciences 34, no. 1 (July 1909): 33–42; and “Fosdick Defends City,” New York Times, November 25, 1931.

5 On Straton's support for Bryan, see “Dr. Straton's Comment on Action of Tennessee's Governor in Signing Bill Prohibiting Teaching of Evolution in Public Schools,” March 24, 1925, John Roach Straton Collection, Box 21, Folder 15: “Evolution,” American Baptist Historical Society, Atlanta, Georgia (hereafter cited as ABHS); “Calls for Spread of Tennessee Law: Better to Wipe Out all Schools than Undermine Faith in Bible, Straton Says,” New York Times, July 20, 1925; and Ferenc M. Szasz, “John Roach Straton: Baptist Fundamentalism in an Age of Change, 1875–1929,” The Quarterly Review: A Survey of Southern Baptist Progress 34 (April/May/June 1974): 247.

6 R. S. Beal, “The Eternal Searchlight Turned on Modern Socialism,” The Christian Fundamentals in School and Church 8 (January 1926): 44–45.

7 “Fosdick A Bigger Peril than Darrow: Dr. Norris in Tent Evangel Sermon Calls the Liberal ‘A Wolf in Sheep's Clothing,’” New York Times, August 24, 1925.

8 “Dr. Straton Assails Museum of History: Says ‘False and Beastial Theologies of Evolution’ are Harmful to Children,” New York Times, March 9, 1924; “Clergy at Theater Criticize the Stage: Straton Attacks Actors’ Morals in Letter Read at Play ‘Simon Called Peter,’” New York Times, December 5, 1924; and “Calls the Stage the Church's Enemy: Dr. Straton Takes Issue with Methodists Who Look Kindly on Dancing and Theaters,” New York Times, January 9, 1922.

9 Straton's sermon, “Building the Temple: God's Call to his Church,” is quoted in Matthew Bowman, The Urban Pulpit: New York City and the Fate of Liberal Evangelicalism (New York: Oxford University Press, 2014), 226.

10 Kathy Peiss, Cheap Amusements: Working Women and Leisure in Turn-of-the-Century New York (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1986), examines the relationship between young women's wage-earning and their frequenting dance halls, as well as the difference between their pursuit of pleasure and prostitution. See also Carol Marin, Dance Marathons: Performing American Culture in the 1920s and 1930s (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1994); Julie Malnig, “Athena Meets Venus: Visions of Women in Social Dance in the Teens and Early 1920s,” Dance Research Journal 31, no. 2 (Autumn 1999): 34–62; Shayla Thiel-Stern, From the Dance Hall to Facebook: Teen Girls, Mass Media and Moral Panic in the United State, 1905–2010 (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2014), 24–55; and Dale Cockrell, Everybody's Doin’ It: Sex, Music, and Dance in New York, 1840–1917 (New York: W. W. Norton, 2019).

11 Szasz, “John Roach Straton,” 59.

12 Giordano, Satan and the Dancehall, 200; and George M. Marsden, Fundamentalism and American Culture: The Shaping of Twentieth Century Evangelicalism, 1870–1925 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1980), 163.

13 John Roach Straton, The Old Gospel at the Heart of the Metropolis (New York: George H. Doran Company, 1925), 83.

14 Marsden, Fundamentalism and American Culture, 159; and Curtis Lee Laws, “Convention Side Lights,” Watchman-Examiner 8 (July 1, 1920): 834.

15 Charles Francis Potter had once been a Baptist but had become a Unitarian minister by the time he debated Straton. Potter later became the pastor at the Church of the Divine Paternity, a Universalist congregation on the Upper West Side, but resigned when his religious views and ministerial approaches came into conflict with officials there. He founded the First Humanist Society in New York in 1929, and in 1933 became one of the signers of the “Humanist Manifesto.” See Charles Francis Potter, The Preacher and I: An Autobiography (New York: Crown, 1951), 137–244; and Charles Francis Potter, Humanism: A New Religion (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1930).

16 Bowman, The Urban Pulpit, 264; “Straton to Debate with a Modernist: Calvary Pastor Accepts Challenge of the Rev. C. F. Potter, a Unitarian Minister,” New York Times, December 6, 1924; “Dr. Straton Wins in Darwin Debate: Gets Verdict Against Theory of Evolution and the Rev. C. F. Potter, Modernist,” New York Times, January 29, 1924; and Ferenc M. Szasz, “Three Fundamentalist Leaders: The Roles of William Bell Riley, John Roach Straton, and William Jennings Bryan in the Fundamentalist-Modernist Controversy” (unpublished PhD diss., University of Rochester, 1969), 20–21.

17 John Roach Straton, The Famous New York Fundamentalist-Modernist Debates: The Orthodox Side (New York: George H. Doran, 1924), v.

18 Potter was invited to advise and support the defense of Scopes by Bainbridge Colby, an eminent lawyer and former Secretary of State, who along with Darrow and Dudley Field Malone decided to take the case under the auspices of the American Civil Liberties Union. See Potter, The Preacher and I, 259, 287, 289; and John Thomas Scopes, The World's Most Famous Court Trial: Tennessee Evolution Case (Union, N.J.: Lawbook Exchange, 1997), 303–304.

19 Robert Moats Miller, Harry Emerson Fosdick: Preacher, Pastor, Prophet (New York: Oxford University Press, 1985), 149; and Straton, The Famous New York Fundamentalist-Modernist Debates, vii.

20 Robert T. Handy, A History of Union Theological Seminary in New York (New York: Columbia University Press, 1987), 95–120; Mark S. Massa, “‘Mediating Modernism’: Charles Briggs, Catholic Modernism, and an ‘Ecumenical’ Plot,” Harvard Theological Review 81, no. 4 (October 1988): 413–430; and Harvey Hill, “History and Heresy: Religious Authority and the Trial of Charles Augustus Briggs,” U.S. Catholic Historian 20, no. 3 (Summer 2002): 1–21.

21 Harry Emerson Fosdick to Raymond B. Fosdick, February 21, 1919, Harry Emerson Fosdick Papers, Box 764, Folder: “Fundamentalist Modernist Controversy: Clippings, Correspondence, Articles (1919–1922),” Riverside Church Archives, New York City (hereafter cited as RCA); William H. P. Faunce to Harry Emerson Fosdick, January 6, 1919, Harry Emerson Fosdick Papers, Box 764, Folder: “Fundamentalist Modernist Controversy: Clippings, Correspondence, Articles (1919–1922),” RCA; and Dorothy Ganfield Fowler, A City Church: The First Presbyterian Church in New York City, 1716–1776 (New York: First Presbyterian Church, 1981), 157–163.

22 Bowman, The Urban Pulpit, 256, 253; and Marsden, Fundamentalism in American Culture, 172–173.

23 Harry Emerson Fosdick, The Living of These Days (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1956), 135. See Harry Emerson Fosdick to Rev. E. G. Tewksbury, Shanghai, China, August 31, 1922, Harry Emerson Fosdick Papers, Box 1, series 2, 2b, Folder: “Correspondence Asia Trip 1921–1923,” Union Theological Seminary Archives, New York City (hereafter cited as UTSA); and Rev. E. G. Tewksbury to Harry Emerson Fosdick, July 27, 1922, Harry Emerson Fosdick Papers, Box 1, series 2, 2b, Folder: “Correspondence Asia Trip 1921–1923,” UTSA.

24 William Jennings Bryan, “God and Evolution: Charge that American Teachers of Darwinism ‘Make the Bible a Scrap of Paper,’” New York Times, February 26, 1922; Harry Emerson Fosdick, “Attacks W. J. B.: Preacher Says Bryan's Article on Evolution Works Injury to the Bible—God Infinitely Grander than Occasional Wonder-Worker,” New York Times, March 12, 1922; and Kazin, A Godly Hero, 276–277.

25 Harry Emerson Fosdick, “Shall the Fundamentalists Win? Sermon by Rev. Harry Emerson Fosdick, DD. At the First Presbyterian Church, New York, N.Y.,” May 12, 1922, Harry Emerson Fosdick Collection, Box 764, Folder: “Fundamentalist-Modernist Controversy, First Presbyterian: Clippings, Correspondence, Articles (1919–1922),” RCA; Hardy Clemons, “The Key Theological Ideas of Harry Emerson Fosdick” (unpublished PhD diss., Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, 1966); and Halford R. Ryan, Harry Emerson Fosdick: Persuasive Preacher (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood, 1989), 15–24.

26 Quoted in Fosdick, The Living of These Days, 153.

27 “Grant on Fundamentalism,” New York Times, December 10, 1923; and J. Gresham Machen, Christianity and Liberalism (New York: MacMillan, 1923), 2, 45. See also D. G. Hart, Defending the Faith: J. Gresham Machen and the Crisis of Conservative Protestantism in Modern America (Phillipsburg, N.J.: P&R Publishing, 2003).

28 “Bryan Attacks Fosdick,” New York Times, January 8, 1923; “Baptists Launch Anti-Heresy Drive: Dr. Straton is President,” New York Times, January 31, 1923; and “Dr. Fosdick Scored by Fundamentalists at Straton's Church,” New York Tribune, March 11, 1924. See also Robert A. Ashworth, “The Fundamentalist Movement among the Baptists,” Journal of Religion 4, no. 6 (November 1924): 611–631.

29 “Debate: ‘Resolved: That the Interests of Humanity Can Best Be Served under Capitalism’: Affirmative: Ivy Lee; Negative: Charles Solomon,” Ivy L. Lee Papers, Box 9: “Writings and Speeches,” Folder 9: 1925, Seeley G. Mudd Manuscript Library, Princeton, New Jersey.

30 Peter J. Paris, John W. Cook, James Hundut-Beumler, Lawrence H. Mamiya, Leonora Tubbs Tisdale, and Judith Weisenfeld, eds., The History of the Riverside Church in the City of New York (New York: New York University Press, 2004), 17; The Nation, November 1, 1922; and “Baccalaureate Address Delivered to the Graduating Class of Princeton University at the 176th Annual Commencement, by President John Grier Hibben,” June 17, 1923, Harry Emerson Fosdick Papers, Box 764, Folder: “Fundamentalist-Modernist Controversy, clippings, correspondence, articles (1919–1922),” RCA. Hibben had sent an advanced copy of the address to Fosdick. Fosdick responded with his thanks the day after Hibben delivered the address before Princeton's graduating class.

31 “What New York Thinks About,” editorial from Railroad Men (undated, ca. 1923) in Harry Emerson Fosdick Papers, Box 764, Folder: “Fundamentalists/First Presbyterian Controversy: Clippings, Correspondence and Articles (1919–1921),” RCA.

32 D. W. Bebbington, Evangelicalism in Modern Britian: A History from the 1730s to the 1980s (London: Routledge, 1989), 3; Michael A. G. Haykin and Kenneth J. Stewart, eds., The Advent of Evangelicalism: Exploring Historical Continuities (Nashville: B&H Academic, 2008); and Mark A. Noll, David W. Bebbington, and George M. Marsden, eds., Evangelicals: Who They Have Been, Are Now, And Could Become (Grand Rapids: Erdmans, 2019).

33 “Why Not Be Fair With Fosdick,” The Continent 53 (October 5, 1922): 1240; Harry Emerson Fosdick to Nolan R. Best, New York City, December 20, 1922, Harry Emerson Fosdick Collection, Box 764, Folder: “First Presbyterian Church Controversy,” RCA. Best resigned from The Continent in October 1922 after an editorial he wrote, “Reflections on ‘Has Been’, ‘Is,’ and ‘Must Be,’” was suppressed by the publisher. Best's highly favorable editorial was ostensibly about Fosdick's initial resignation from First Presbyterian Church, but it also criticized the Westminster Confession, suggesting that it should be revised and that ministerial requirements should be modified. See “Echoes from Mr. Best's Resignation,” Christian Work, November 8, 1924.

34 Fosdick, The Living of These Days, 150; and Harry Emerson Fosdick to Rev. Edgar Whittaker Work, December 28, 1923, Harry Emerson Fosdick Collection, Box 764, Folder: “Correspondence: Fosdick and Henry Sloan Coffin,” RCA.

35 “Presbytery Takes Issue with Fosdick: Baptist Preacher's Sermon in First Presbyterian Church Officially Opposed,” New York Times, January 26, 1923; Clarence E. N. Macartney, Shall Unbelief Win? (Philadelphia: Wilber Hanf, 1922); and Fosdick, The Living of These Days, 171.

36 Frederick Lynch, “The Observer: The New York Presbyterian and Dr. Fosdick,” Christian Work, January 26, 1924, 108.

37 “Excerpt from ‘The Presbyterian’ of February 14, 1924, page 5, Action and Complaint: New York Presbytery,” Harry Emerson Fosdick Papers, Series 4E, Box 1: Folder: “Fosdick Fundamentalist Modernist Controversy,” UTSA; “The Coming Assembly,” The Presbyterian 94, no. 14 (April 3, 1924): 6–7; and G. E. Schlbrede, “The Presbytery of New York Not All Untrue to the Standards of Our Church,” The Presbyterian 94, no. 14 (April 3, 1924): 7.

38 “Modernism Scored at Convention of Baptist Bible Union,” New York Tribune, May 28, 1924; and Bradley J. Longfield, The Presbyterian Controversy: Fundamentalists, Modernists, and Moderates (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991), 104, 126.

39 Longfield, The Presbyterian Controversy, 126.

40 John B. Macnab, “Fosdick at First Church,” Journal of Presbyterian History 52, no. 1 (Spring 1974): 14–18; and “The Farewell Sermon,” The Congregationalist, March 12, 1925.

41 Fosdick, The Living of These Days, 177; James Hadnut-Beumler, “The Riverside Church and the Development of Twentieth-Century American Protestantism,” in History of the Riverside Church, ed. Paris et al., 19; Albert F. Schenkel, The Rich Man and the Kingdom: John D. Rockefeller, Jr., and the Protestant Establishment (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1995); Ron Chernow, Titan: The Life of John D. Rockefeller, Sr. (New York: Random House, 1998); John D. Rockefeller Jr., The Christian Church: What of its Future (New York: Protestant Council of New York, 1918), 7; Thomas W. Phillips Jr., The Interchurch World Movement and Rockefeller's Conception of the Christian Church (Cincinnati: Standard Press, 1920); and Darren Dochuk, Anointed With Oil: How Christianity and Crude Made Modern America (New York: Basic Books, 2019), 165.

42 Harry Emerson Fosdick to the Members of the Park Avenue Baptist Church, New York City, May 1925, Harry Emerson Fosdick Papers, Box 720, Folder: “Park Avenue Baptist Newspaper, ‘Call of Dr. Fosdick to Park Avenue, CH,’” RCA; Cornelius Woelfkin to the Members of the Park Avenue Baptist Church, New York City, May 15, 1925, Harry Emerson Fosdick Papers, Box 720, Folder: “Park Avenue Baptist Newspaper, ‘Call of Dr. Fosdick to Park Avenue, CH,’” RCA; and “Dr. Fosdick's Acceptance,” May 1925, Harry Emerson Fosdick Papers, Box 720, Folder: “Park Avenue Baptist Newspaper, ‘Call of Dr. Fosdick to Park Avenue, CH,’” RCA.

43 John Roach Straton, “Is it Right that Dr. Fosdick Should Explicitly Repudiate Baptism By Immersion Only, and Then Be Immediately Endorsed and ‘Fellowshipped’ by 41 Members of the New York Baptist Ministers’ Conference—Including Secretaries and Other Paid Employees of our Denomination? When a Sincere Effort is Made to Undo the Influence of these Wrongs, Shall Free Speech be Throttled and the Rights of Members of the Baptist Ministers’ Conference be Ruthlessly Overridden in the Interest of Unbelief? A Letter to the New York Baptist Ministers’ Conference by Rev. John Roach Straton, D.D., Pastor of Calvary Baptist Church, New York, N.Y.,” March 15, 1925, John Roach Straton Collection, Box 24, Folder 10: “Fosdick, Harry E.,” ABHS; “Baptist Ministers Defeat Straton Attack on Fosdick,” New York Herald Tribune, March 17, 1925; P. W. Wilson, “Dr. Fosdick Raises a New Church Issue: Proposal to Make Immersion Optional, Opposed by Many Baptists, Turns Attention from Doctrine to Ritual Question—Baptism in Church History,” New York Times, March 24, 1925; and John Roach Straton, “Religious Authority and the Lawless Dr. Fosdick,” The Faith Fundamentalist 1, no. 8 (December 18, 1925): 1, 5–9.

44 Because his name appears on the top left-hand side of the document, it is presumed that Ivy L. Lee wrote it, but that is unlikely. There is no corroborating evidence in any of the documentation that Lee wrote it. The document is written by someone who presumably has a stake in “The Fosdick Church,” but Lee did not. He did not follow Fosdick to Park Avenue Baptist/Riverside, remaining a Presbyterian for the rest of his life. While presumably they remained friends beyond the Presbyterian Controversy, Lee and Fosdick appeared to have only a friendship in correspondence. Indeed, the document is one among a number of documents Lee sent to Fosdick keeping him abreast of the controversy and its aftermath. Who actually compiled it remains a mystery.

45 “The Fosdick Church,” 1924, Harry Emerson Fosdick Papers, Series 4A, Box 1, Folder: “Riverside Church Administration,” RCA; Cornelius Woelfkin to Harry Emerson Fosdick, May 1925, Harry Emerson Fosdick Papers, Box 720, Folder: “Park Avenue Baptist Newspaper, ‘Call of Dr. Fosdick to Park Avenue, CH,’” RCA; Harry Emerson Fosdick to Cornelius Woelfkin, June 19, 1926, Fosdick Collection, Box 12, Series 2, Correspondence, Subseries 2, Folder: “Correspondence—Woelfkin, Cornelius, 1926–1928,” UTSA; and Cornelius Woelfkin to the Members of Park Avenue Baptist Church, July 12, 1927, Fosdick Collection, Box 12, Series 2, Correspondence, Subseries 2, Folder: “Correspondence—Woelfkin, Cornelius, 1926–1928,” UTSA.

46 “Darwin Lands Among the Saints,” Literary Digest, October 11, 1930.

47 S. J. Woolf, “A Religion to Fit the Life of Today,” New York Times, October 5, 1930.

48 John Wesley Cook, “A Christian Vision of Unity: An Architectural History of the Riverside Church,” in History of the Riverside Church, ed. Paris et al., 137–177; and “Riverside Church Opens Doors Today: Heavy Demand for Admission,” New York Times, October 5, 1930.

49 Peter J. Paris, “Introduction,” History of the Riverside Church, 1.

50 Harry Emerson Fosdick, “What Matters in Religion,” Church Monthly 5, no. 1 (November 1930): 5.

51 John Roach Straton, “The Real Issues Between Modernists and Fundamentalists,” March 13, 1927, John Roach Straton Papers, Box 30, Folder: “Fosdick, Harry E.,” American Baptist Theological Society, Atlanta, Georgia (hereafter cited as ABTS). See Harry Emerson Fosdick, “What the Liberals are Driving At,” “What Christian Liberals are Driving At,” and “I Believe in Man” in Adventurous Religion and Other Essays (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1926), 232–257 and 30–44, respectively.

52 John D. Rockefeller Jr., The Christian Church: What of its Future (New York: Protestant Council, 1945), 5; and Dochuk, Anointed with Oil, 168.

53 “Harry Emerson Fosdick, “Creeds and Truth,” World Tomorrow (August 1923): 233; “Dr. Fosdick Holds Creeds Hide Jesus,” New York Times, October 27, 1930; and Mina Pendo, A Brief History of Riverside Church (New York: Riverside Church, 1957), 48–49.

54 “Religion Termed Superior to Church,” New York Times, August 3, 1931.

55 Fosdick, The Living of These Days, 204; Pendo, Brief History of Riverside Church, 50; “The Social Service Department,” Church Monthly 6, no. 6 (April 1932): 384; Judith Weisenfeld, “Universal in Spirit, Local in Character: The Riverside Church and New York City,” in History of Riverside Church, ed. Paris et al., 190; and “The Fosdick Church,” 1924, RCA.

56 “Our Growing Membership,” Church Monthly 5, no. 12 (October 1931): 245; “Music Jottings,” New York Age, April 25, 1931; “Tuskegee Choir at Rockefeller Church,” Spokesman, February 4, 1933; “Dr. Fosdick Welcomes Negro History Group,” New York Times, November 10, 1931; “Negroes and Whites March Side by Side,” Daily Citizen, November 27, 1933; and “Race and Other Prejudice Most Primitive and Barbarous,” Negro World, June 18, 1927.

57 “The Fosdick Church,” 1924, RCA.

58 “Bryan ‘Prophet,’ Darrow ‘Fiend,’ Straton's View,” New York Tribune, July 20, 1925; and “Dr. Straton, in Bryan's Toga, Seeks 20 Debates with Darrow,” New York Herald Tribune, August 4, 1925.

59 Potter, The Preacher and I, 259, 287, 289; and Scopes, World's Most Famous Court Trial, 304.

60 H. L. Mencken, A Religious Orgy in Tennessee: A Reporter's Account of the Scopes Monkey Trial (New York: Melville House, 2006), 109, 105, 108, 119. Original articles published in The Baltimore Sun, The Nation, and The American Mercury, all in 1925. See also Terry Teachout, The Skeptic: A Life of H. L. Mencken (New York: Perennial, HarperCollins, 2002), 212–222; and “Dr. Straton Praying, He says, for Mencken,” New York Times, September 13, 1926.

61 Matthew Avery Sutton, American Apocalypse: A History of Modern Evangelicalism (Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2014), xiii. See Marsden, Fundamentalism in American Culture, 199–205; and Joel Carpenter, Revive Us Again: The Reawakening of American Fundamentalism (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997). See also Earnest R. Sandeen, The Roots of Fundamentalism: British and American Millenarianism, 1800–1930 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1970).

62 Norman F. Furniss, The Fundamentalist Controversy, 1918–1931 (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1954), 53; and Szasz, “John Roach Straton,” 286.

63 Walter Ross Peterson, “John Roach Straton: Portrait of a Fundamentalist Preacher” (unpublished PhD diss., Boston University, 1965), 26.

64 Szasz, “John Roach Straton,” 288; and Furniss, The Fundamentalist Controversy, 57.

65 Szasz, “John Roach Straton,” 294–295.

66 Szasz, “John Roach Straton,” 290; and Furniss, The Fundamentalist Controversy, 63.

67 John Roach Straton, “Are These Baptist Traitors?,” John Roach Straton papers, Box 24; Folder 10: “Fosdick, Harry E.,” ABTS.

68 Undated, untitled document in John Roach Straton papers, Box 32, Folder 17: “Racial Issues,” ABTS.

69 Peterson, “John Roach Straton,” 277.

70 John Roach Straton to Francis G. Caffey, November 21, 1928, John Roach Straton papers, Box 32, Folder 17: “Racial Issues,” ABTS.

71 Linda Gordon, The Second Coming of the KKK: The Ku Klux Klan of the 1920s and the American Political Tradition (New York: Liveright, 2018); “Straton, Clarke to Campaign Here,” New York Times, January 10, 1927; “Straton Quits Supreme Kingdom, But Defends It,” New York Times, January 20, 1927; and “Straton Formally Quits ‘Kingdom,’” New York Times, January 26, 1927.

72 “Calvary Not a Klan Nest, Says Straton,” New York Times, November 20, 1922; “Ku Klux Must Go, Says Straton,” New York Times, December 4, 1922; “Straton Decries Race Prejudice,” New York Times, December 18, 1922; and “Calvary Church Expels Ku Klux Lecturer, Who Boasted Dr. Straton was Afraid to Act,” New York Times, December 29, 1929.

73 “Rev. Dr. Straton Quits Supreme Kingdom,” Broad Ax, January 29, 1927; “The Greatest Danger in American Life,” Negro World, June 4, 1927; Dr. Alma Mary Haskins, “Went To White Church,” Chicago Defender, February 24, 1923; and “Dr. Straton and the Negro,” New York Age, December 10, 1927.

74 Szasz, “John Roach Straton,” 300; and Thomas A. Robinson, Preacher Girl: Uldine Utely and the Industry of Revival (Waco: Baylor University Press, 2016).

75 “Defends Girl in Pulpit,” New York Times, September 20, 1926; and John Roach Straton to Curtis Lee Laws, New York City, December 17, 1926, John Roach Straton papers, Box 17, Folder 11, ABTS.

76 “Five Deacons Quit Straton over ‘Rituals,’” New York Herald Tribune, June 23, 1927.

77 “Straton Denies Pentecostal Tenet,” Baltimore Sun, June 27, 1927; and “Straton Disavows Pentecostal Views,” New York Times, June 27, 1927.

78 “Straton to Call Uldine to ‘Save’ City Soon,” New York Herald Tribune, September 23, 1927; and “God Will Visit Wicked New York Soon – Straton,” Atlanta Constitution, September 24, 1927.

79 “Straton's Healing Causes New Schism,” New York Times, November 1, 1927; “Dr. Straton Defies Departing Critics,” New York Times, November 2, 1927; “Flock of Afflicted at Straton Service,” New York Times, November 7, 1927; and “Straton Defends Healing Services,” New York Times, November 14, 1927.

80 “Woman Healer Leads Service for Dr. Straton,” New York Herald Tribune, November 22, 1927; “Straton Assails Medicine,” New York Times, November 23, 1927; and “Straton's Family Tell of Holy Spirit,” New York Times, December 8, 1927.

81 Hillyer H. Straton and Ferenc M. Szasz, “The Reverend John Straton and the Presidential Campaign of 1928,” New York History 49, no. 2 (April 1968): 200.

82 “Smith Aids Vice, Straton Charges,” New York Times, August 8, 1928; and Szasz, “Three Fundamentalist Leaders.” See also Straton and Szasz, “The Reverend John Roach Straton and the Presidential Campaign of 1928,” 200–217.

83 Straton and Szasz, “The Reverend John Roach Straton and the Presidential Race of 1928,” 204.

84 Giordano, Satan in the Dance Hall, 191; and “Gov. Smith Declared Hell-Sent,” Los Angeles Times, September 24, 1928.

85 “Threats on Life Follow Victory, Says Dr. Straton,” New York Herald Tribune, November 12, 1928.

86 “Dr. John Roach Straton Dead; Pulpit Fundamentalist Crusader,” New York Herald Tribune, October 30, 1929.

87 Jon Butler, God in Gotham: The Miracle of Religion in Modern Manhattan (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2020), 88; “Calvary Baptists Wipe Out Deficit,” New York Times, September 8, 1925; “Sue Calvary to Bar Church Skyscraper,” New York Times, May 27, 1926; “Skyscraper Plan of Calvary Upheld,” New York Times, February 15, 1927; and “Dr. Straton Shifts in Skyscraper Fight,” New York Times, September 12, 1927.

88 “John Roach Straton Dies in Sanitarium,” New York Times, October 30, 1929.

89 Stanley Walker, “Tall Cedar of Lebanon,” New York Herald Tribune, November 1, 1929; and “Dr. J. R. Straton, Pulpit Crusader is Dead at 54,” New York Herald Tribune, October 30, 1929. See also Stanley Walker, The Night Club Era (New York: Frederick A. Stokes, 1933).

90 “Dr. John Roach Straton,” Trenton New Jersey Gazette, October 30, 1929; and Heywood Broun (“It Seems to Me” column), New York City Telegraph, October 31, 1929.

91 “Dr. Straton,” New York Herald Tribune, October 31, 1929; New Republic, November 13, 1929; “John Roach Straton,” Baltimore Evening Sun, October 29, 1929; and Szasz, “Three Fundamentalist Leaders,” 334.

92 Miller, Harry Emerson Fosdick, 389; and William Hordern, “Young Theologians Rebel,” Christian Century 69, no. 11 (March 1952): 306–307.

93 W. W. Prescott, “The Confessed Failure of Modernism—No 1,” The Ministry 10, no. 2 (February 1937).

94 “Fosdick Denounces Excess in Drinking,” New York Times, May 18, 1931; “Dr. Fosdick Denies Change in Morality,” New York Times, February 8, 1932; “Fosdick on Divorce,” New York Times, January 15, 1934; and “Fosdick Denounces ‘Demoralizing’ Books and Plays ‘Compounded of Sex and Cynicism,’” New York Times, May 1, 1933.

95 “Fosdick Asks Unity Centered in Christ,” New York Times, May 23, 1932; “Fosdick Appeals for Full Religion,” New York Times, January 16, 1933; and “Faith Unifies Life, Says Dr. Fosdick,” New York Times, May 14, 1934.

96 “Dr. Fosdick Upholds Old-Time Religion,” New York Times, January 18, 1932.

97 Ryan, Halford R., Harry Emerson Fosdick: Persuasive Preacher (New York: Praeger, 1989), 45–52Google Scholar; and “Modernist Faith Held Inadequate,” New York Times, November 4, 1935.

98 Fosdick, The Living of These Days, 246; and Ryan, The Sermons of Harry Enerson Fosdick, 46.

99 Miller, Harry Emerson Fosdick, 392; and Fosdick, The Living of These Days, 246.

100 Miller, Harry Emerson Fosdick, 392.

101 Miller, Harry Emerson Fosdick, 392.