HISTORY IN THE MAKING

Dr. Harry Emerson Fosdick is again the center of public attention. Seen in historical perspective, the "Modernist" controversy is the logical issue of Luther's successful revolt against authority in the sixteenth century. Since every new step in matters of importance is almost certain to crystallize the liberal and conservative tempers of men into rival camps of champions and opponents of the innovation, a sharp division between "Modernist" and "Fundamentalist" has taken place. The leading voices in the Presbyterian general assembly, upholding the existing order, strove to avoid the threatened cleavage in the church, and did not openly denounce the new tendencies. It saw that a tactful request to Dr. Fosdick to accept the Presbyterian articles of faith, or resign his church, would convey a tacit denunciation of those tendencies he represented. That Dr. Fosdick has answered their ultimatum with resignation is not surprising.

Before Harvard audiences he has emphasized his super-creedal ideal. He has believed that a new era is at hand, in which traditional religion is breaking through its hard chrysalis of dogma and coming forth a changing, living faith in harmony with a changing, living world. For him, dogmas can not contain it. Creeds may fit it for the moment, but for a moment only. The aspirations of the new man rise higher; knowledge increases; thought advanced through an ever broadening vista: with the result that dogma and creed have ceased to express adequately for the new generation what they were fully capable of expressing for the old. Dr. Fosdick takes the historical, point of view which sees all human thought and institutions in continual metamorphosis, and religion, and ethics itself, not exempt from this supreme law.

To many minds Dr. Fosdick has spoken as a new apostle of truth. Others see in him a dangerous radical, advocate of a convenient, but self-destroying, morality. But whatever the individual judgment, one must see that, as this dynamic devotee of a new order breaks with the existing system of creed and sect, an event is taking place fraught with vital consequences in the coming moral and religious life of the nation.