Harry Emerson Fosdick
Harry Emerson Fosdick
Harry Emerson Fosdickwas an American pastor. Fosdick became a central figure in the "Fundamentalist-Modernist Controversy" within American Protestantism in the 1920s and 1930s and was one of the most prominent liberal ministers of the early 20th Century. Although a Baptist, he was called to serve as pastor, in New York City, at First Presbyterian Church in Manhattan's West Village, and then at the historic, inter-denominational Riverside Church in Morningside Heights, Manhattan...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionClergyman
Date of Birth24 May 1878
CountryUnited States of America
Preaching is personal counseling on a group basis.
Friends are necessary to a happy life. When friendship deserts us, we are as helpless as a ship left by the tide high upon the shore. When friendship returns to us, it's as though the tide came back, giving us buoyancy and freedom.
[L]ife ceases to be a fraction and becomes an integer.
The finest quality of our characters do not come from trying but from the mysterious and yet most effective capacity to be inspired.
It is by acts (actions) and not by ideas (mere thoughts) that people [really] live.
Falsehood is never better than truth, theft better than honesty, treachery better than loyalty, cowardice better than courage.
What a testing of character adversity is.
We cannot restore integrity and morality to our society until each of us-singly and individually-takes responsibility for our actions.
We ask the leaf, "Are you complete in yourself?" And the leaf answers, "No, my life is in the branches." We ask the branch, and the branch answers, "No my life is in the root." We ask the root, and it answers, "No my life is in the trunk and the branches and the leaves. Keep the branches stripped of leaves, and I shall die," So it is with the great tree of being. Nothing is completely and merely individual.
Of all mad faiths maddest is the faith that we can get rid of faith.
One of the strange phenomena of the last century is the spectacle of religion dropping the appeal of fear while other human interests have picked it up.
The process has now run full circle: Preaching originates in personal counseling; preaching is personal counseling on a group basis; personal counseling originates in preaching. Personal counseling imparts to the preacher a practical familiarity with human nature which he would not otherwise obtain.
Religion is something that only secondarily can be taught. It must must primarily be taught.
The stars are not so strange as the mind that studies them, analyzes their light, and measures their distance.