Harry Emerson Fosdick

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While at First Presbyterian Church, on May 21, 1922, Harry Emerson Fosdick delivered his famous sermon “Shall the Fundamentalists Win?”, in which he defended the modernist position. In that sermon, he presented the Bible as a record of the unfolding of God’s will, not as the literal Word of God. He saw the history of Christianity as a change that was developmental, progressive, and gradual. It's evident that the sermon and or thoughts of Fosdick's 1922 speech had a deep impact on the Christian church and society in America. Today, more and more people have their own way of looking at and interpreting the word of God. This is one of the main points I got from this article. There were many quotes in the sermon that served as some important relevance, but three of them stood out a little more. “We should not identify the Fundamentalists with the conservatives. All Fundamentalists are conservatives, but not all conservatives are Fundamentalists. The best conservatives can often give lessons to the liberals in true liberality of spirit, but the Fundamentalist program is essentially illiberal and intolerant.” From this quote I got that Fundamentalists are conservative by nature but also unique in the fact that they are also "illiberal and intolerant". “This is a free country and anybody has a right to hold these opinions or any others if he is sincerely convinced of them. The question is—Has anybody a right to deny the Christian name to those who differ with him on such points and to shut against them the doors of the Christian fellowship? The Fundamentalists say that this must be done.” From this one I got that there is a freedom of speech to take into consideration and with that being said that this is also a free country so everyone has the right to follow their own faith beliefs. “Here in the Christian churches are these two groups
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