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A major figure in American religious and cultural history, Fosdick was famous as a preacher, a pacifist and a champion of civil rights. He was also the author of forty-seven books.

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9780195035124

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A brilliant biography of the religious leader whose pulpit was Riverside Church, and whose parish was all America. --The Washington Post Miller's thoughtful, appreciative depiction is full of drama that brings alive the sparks of intense controversy and the warmth of personal contacts...the definitive study. --Choice Miller has done us a valuable service by describing Fosdick's career, and thereby recalling the contributions the religious left once made (and still might make) to the nation's public debate. --The New Republic Fosdick's life...serves as a prism for displaying the spectrum of social, political, and religious issues preoccupying 20th-century America. --Kirkus Reviews Miller has...written a thoughtful biography of a highly influential Protestant leader. He adeptly locates Fosdick within the wider social and cultural history of the period. He has achieved a mastery not only of the historical literature about the era but also of the complex theological literature of Fosdick's day. He ventures sharp judgments and criticisms of Fosdick and his contemporaries, and yet does so with balance and generosity. --E. Brooks Holifield, Reviews in American History Miller's biography will certainly be the definitive study of this giant of American religious history. --The Journal of American History Represents ten years of research in a vast store of manuscript and printed material and provides a sober historian's check on many blind spots in Fosdick's justly famous autobiography. --American Historical Review A world has diminished, and Miller has rescued from its ruin a monumental figure. A generation that cannot and would not recreate his world can at least sense what it was like, thanks to Miller's achievement. --Martin E. Marty, Journal of the American Academy of Religion. Robert Miller's excellent volume provides a comprehensive account that touches on the numerous social, political, and religious concerns of twentieth-century America. This is the first comprehensive, exhaustively researched biography of Fosdick, and it is a distinguished contribution to American intellectual history. --Religious Humanism This is a superb book, one of the best books I have read this year...Robert Moats Miller has produced a monumental study which no American preacher or historian can ignore. It simply must be read. --Review and Expositor This admirable study demonstrates years of probing into the archival and printed materials, a balanced presentation of a noted Protestant's contribution at the center of America's religious stage, and a book which is a pleasure to read because of its style. --The Catholic Historical Review This monumental volume deserves to be read by every preacher who wishes to see with clarity and in detail how one of the most influential Protestant ministers of his time dealt with all of the issues surrounding him. --Pulpit Digest An exhaustive and engaging study of one of America's most prominent Christian leaders. --Church History [This] excellent, readable, perceptive, and sensitive biography of Harry Emerson Fosdick is a major contribution to the field of American church history. --Theology Today

Too long (ca. 600 p.) and too leisurely, this biography nonetheless shares with its subject a certain mellow charm; and though Fosdick's very long life (18781969) was short on drama, it serves as a prism for displaying the spectrum of social, political, and religious issues preoccupying 20th-century America. Miller (History, UNC, Chapel Hill) never knew Fosdick or heard him preach (he was generally acknowledged to be the prince of the American pulpit, at least before the coming of Billy Graham), but he obviously feels a strong affection for the genial, even-tempered, supremely decent Fosdick. He finds much to admire in Fosdick's liberal Christianity (he refused to recite the Nicene, or any other, Creed), his campaign against the Fundamentalists in the 1920s, his hugely successful tenure at Riverside Church (1930-46), his brave pacifist stance during WW II, his devoted, prolific career as a seminary professor (Union Theological, 1908-46), author (47 books), radio preacher, and spokesman for ecumenical cooperation, civil rights, (moderate) feminism, labor, etc. At the same time Miller carefully measures Fosdick's shortcomings: his feeble ecclesiology, his ignorant dismissal of Freud, his lack of originality (Fosdick himself confessed to having a third-rate mind ), his casual assumption of black cultural inferiority, his fear of tarnishing his splendid public image. One misses in his life an element of Dionysian joy, a dash of wackiness, a touch of spontaneity, a splash of vulgarity, a hint of casual disarray. One doubts if he ever did anything for the hell of it. A sort of minor-key Emerson, a prosperous (friend of John D. Rockefeller), happy (perfect wife and daughters), late-Victorian WASP (educated at Colgate and Columbia) whose heart and mind were big enough to transcend, pretty much, his environment. A rambling, readable, responsible account. (Kirkus Reviews)

A brilliant biography of the religious leader whose pulpit was Riverside Church, and whose parish was all America. The Washington Post

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