The History of the Riverside Church in the City of New York

The Riverside Church emerged out of the mutual vision of John D. Rockefeller, Jr. and Harry Emerson Fosdick, a collaborative venture between America's greatest philanthropist and its most renowned liberal preacher. For seven decades the church has served as the premier model of Protestant liberalism in the United States. The Riverside Church is viewed widely as the place in which to honor visiting dignitaries to New York. It was from the pulpit of the Riverside Church that Martin Luther King, Jr. first publicly voiced his opposition to the Vietnam War, that Nelson Mandela addressed US church leaders after his release from prison, and that speakers as diverse as Cesar Chavez, Jesse Jackson, Desmond Tutu, Fidel Castro, and Reinhold Niebuhr have lectured church and nation about issues of the day. The greatest of American preachers have served as senior minister, including such contemporaries as Ernest T. Campbell, Henry Sloane Coffin, Jr., and James A. Forbes, Jr., and at one time the New York Times printed reports of each Sunday's sermon in its Monday morning edition. The history of the Riverside Church represents the movement from a predominantly white Protestant congregation to a multi-racial and multi-ethnic church that has been at the vanguard of social justice advocacy, liberation theologies, gay and lesbian ministries, nuclear disarmament and peace studies, ethnic and racial dialogue, and Jewish/Christian relations. A collaborative effort by a stellar team of scholars, The History of the Riverside Church in the City of New York offers a critical history of this unique institution on Manhattan's Upper West Side, including its cultural impact on New York City and beyond, its outstanding preachers, and its architecture, in order to offer an assessment of the shifting fortunes of religious progressivism in the twentieth century. - Jacket flap.