Harry
Emerson Fosdick was inaugurating a new chapter in his Christian walk in 1930, and
so he crafted a poem-song to commemorate the occasion. “God of Grace and God of
Glory” was a prayer that Fosdick voiced, or perhaps one might even characterize
it as a dream or vision that he hoped would come to fruition at the brand new Riverside
Church building in Manhattan (see its flag here), New York where he was beginning
anew at the age of 52. Fosdick was no stranger to controversy, and he had
undoubtedly prayed countless times for the fortitude to press on in the face of
criticism. The song he and the members of Riverside sang that day launched a
history of what Fosdick and others would do at this new structure. They saw themselves
in a unique position to influence events not just in the local neighborhood,
but worldwide. One might say it was a vision worthy of the magnitude of the
Creator whom Fosdick and others sought to serve.
Harry
Fosdick was not one to back down from disagreement or shrink from going where
he thought God’s will directed him to go. His mid-life ‘crisis’ had just occurred
in the previous few years of the 1920s before he composed “God of Grace…Glory”.
He was a liberal-progressive minister at a Presbyterian church in the 1920s, although
he had initially ministered as a Baptist during the first 10-15 years of the 20th
Century, including as a chaplain in France during World War I. Because of his
views – that one’s Christian faith could evolve, and ‘modernize’ – he was the
target of fundamentalist Presbyterian critics. He authored several defenses of
his position, but he also decided to move to another church, returning to his
Baptist roots, in the Manhattan borough in New York by 1924. By 1930, one of
that church’s members (John D. Rockefeller) funded the construction of the Riverside
church, where Fosdick began a new ministry. Harry foresaw Riverside as a resource
for the metropolitan community – a place to serve the social, educational, and
worship needs of its people. In the following decades since its dedication,
the Riverside Church would be the scene where various social, political, and
religious issues both nationally and internationally, were addressed publicly.
Fosdick must have noted this possibility, not only as part of his personal inclination,
but as a happenstance of Riverside’s location – next to Columbia University and
in the heart of New York City, and therefore an intersecting point for the
social and political figures of the nation and this Christian community. ‘…Wisdom….Courage’,
as written in the refrain in Fosdick’s poetry, were indeed two commodities that
he could see the Riverside Church would need in abundance. War, racism, and worldwide
health issues were just some of the topics of conversation discussed there over
the coming years.
Riverside’s
history, perhaps due at least in part to what Harry Fosdick helped inspire,
provokes a number of questions. What should a church be saying to its
community? Should it ‘fit in’ or challenge the citizens to stretch themselves? Should
Christians be comfortable and served by the ministerial staff, or should the
community also be admonished to spread His kingdom? Would you or I agree or be
comfortable with all that happens at Riverside? Maybe not, but they are
intersecting with the world about them, undeniably. God can pour his power on
people, as Harry writes in his first verse, and offering them grace and help in
the world in which we all live must be His will, agreed? Jesus did no less.
That’s how he got to talk to them. Let’s get conversations started.
See more
information on the song discussed above in The Complete Book of Hymns –
Inspiring Stories About 600 Hymns and Praise Songs by William J. Petersen
and Ardythe Petersen, Tyndale House Publishers, 2006.
See a biography
of composer here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harry_Emerson_Fosdick
See here information
re: the church where the composer ministered: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Riverside_Church
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