Harry Emerson Fosdick
The preacher whose sermon “Shall the Fundamentalists Win?”, given at the First Presbyterian Church in New York on 21 May 1922, made the liberal case for tolerance within the evangelical churches.
Fosdick preached “Shall the Fundamentalists Win?” at the First Presbyterian Church, New York, on 21 May 1922; the printed text was taken from a stenographic report (Fosdick, Shall the Fundamentalists Win? title page). He said that the Baptist and Presbyterian churches were the two most affected by the Fundamentalist movement, and that many Christians were trying to hold the new knowledge of science and history together with their faith (Fosdick, Shall the Fundamentalists Win? pp. 4–5). He spoke, he said, “from the viewpoint of liberal opinions”, and warned liberals too against intolerance (Fosdick, Shall the Fundamentalists Win? pp. 11–12). See the Fundamentals and the Modernist Controversy.
In the timeline
- 1910 to 1925, firm dateThe Fundamentals and the Modernist Controversy
Twelve volumes called The Fundamentals are sent free to Protestant ministers from about 1910. In the 1920s a dispute between Fundamentalists and liberals over the Bible, miracles and modern knowledge divides American churches and reaches a courtroom at Dayton.