Who is Fundamental?

The General Assembly governs the Presbyterian Church. It is now in annual session at Indianapolis. It is the scene of a significant conflict of opinion over modernism in general and Dr. Harry Emerson Fosdick in particular.

On the one side are the so-called Fundamentalists; on the other are Liberals or Modernists who believe that they are more fundamental than the Fundamentalists.

The Fundamentalists. In 1643 was written the Westminster Confession, the constitution of Presbyterian faith. It substituted the authority of the Bible for the authority of the Roman Pope, and it held that the Bible is " the only infallible rule of faith and practice." But who shall decide what the Bible means? One group today insists on a literal interpretation. They are Fundamentalists. They claim that not one jot or one tittle of the Word of God can be wrong. And they seek to oust Liberal preachers who interpret the scriptures in the light of modern thought.

Liberals, like Dr. Fosdick, claim that the agelong experiences of religion remain, but that the interpretation changes with the time. He rejects the biblical ideas of science, and accepts modern conclusions. In a sermon last summer Dr. Fosdick pointed out the many similarities between the story of the Virgin Birth and the stories told of the founders of other religions. This now famous sermon, entitled Shall the Fundamentalists Win? made the conservative Presbyterians of Philadelphia attack Dr. Fosdick's right to preach in the pulpit of the First Church, New York. The Fundamentalists hold that the Bible is proved by prophecies which have come true, and miracles like the Virgin Birth, which demonstrate the Divinity of Christ, and the absolute superiority of Christianity over all other religions. Dr. Fosdick points out the similarities between Christian miracles and those of other religions, and declares that the might of Christianity is in its Christ, not in the prophecies or miracles which have clustered about Him.

Liberals believe themselves to be more fundamental than the Fundamentalists, because their religion does not center on smaller matters of scripture like unscientific geography or unproved miracles, but on a Being who was so Divine that men could see God in Him. While the Fundamentalists see their whole scheme of salvation slipping if science and higher criticism of the Bible are accepted, the Liberals see the whole scheme of salvation rendered ridiculous if unscientific (and to them stories nonessential) in the Bible are held to be prerequisite to Christianity. Both sides of the controversy are interested in science, one claiming ideas like evolution and the reign of law as revelations that can be made friendly to the truths of Christianity, the other holding them to be irreconcilable with Christianity as taught in the Bible.

The conservatives have a strong leader in William J. Bryan. Dr. Fosdick, who, although a Baptist, has been preaching in a Presbyterian Church, is one of the few liberals who has produced real devotional literature, such as his books on The Meaning of Prayer, The Second Mile and The Meaning of Service. If he is ousted, it will show that the fourth largest Protestant denomination in the United States, caught between the two horns of a dilemma, has chosen to impale itself upon scriptural infallibility rather than leave the interpretation of the Bible to individual conscience, which is too prone to be affected by modern science.

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