Fosdick Boycotted

Methodist Episcopal clergymen of Philadelphia met last week at a terrible table. Upon it lay a copy of the Epworth Herald, organ of the Methodist young" people's society. It was open to an article contributed by Dr. Harry Emerson Fosdick, famed Liberal.

Without a "nay," although some of the clergymen present did not vote, the meeting adopted a resolution threatening to boycott Epworth Editor Edward J. Gratz if he continued to print articles by Dr. Fosdick. No quibblers, they sharply pronounced as follows: "Upon the article named we have no special criticism, but upon his admission to the paper under any caption we have definite criticism."

It went on to point out that Dr. Fosdick had in the past qualified as legendary several gospel miracles, including: the fish with the coin in its mouth (St. Matt. XVII, 27), the walking on the water (St. Matt. XIV, 25:29; St. Mark VI, 48:50; St. John VI, 19:21), and the withering of the fig-tree (St. Matt. XXI, 19). It charged also that Dr. Fosdick does not believe in the resurrection of Christ.

These beliefs were called Unitarian. But Dr. Fosdick is not, like Chief Justice William Howard Taft, a Unitarian; he is a Baptist, pastor of the Park Avenue Baptist Church in Manhattan. He has already been target for the thunders of Presbyterians, when he was preaching at the First Presbyterian Church in Manhattan. At that time he saw fit to quit his pulpit (TIME, March 9, 1925).

Hot on the pronouncement of the Methodist boycott threat, flames leaped one night in the nearly completed $4,000,000 Riverside Church, being built by John Davison Rockefeller Jr. on Riverside Drive for Dr. Fosdick. Feeding on a forest of scaffolding in the nave, they gutted the building, left it an empty shell of blackened walls. The damage was estimated at $1,000,000. It was the third time in the last two months fire has broken out in the church.