Below is a comprehensive, narrative summary of Harry Emerson Fosdick’s sermon “Shall the Fundamentalists Win?” (delivered May 21, 1922 at the First Presbyterian Church, New York). I summarize Fosdick’s argument, style, and the immediate historical impact of the sermon, while noting the key theological claims he addressed.
Harry Emerson Fosdick opened his address from the posture of a preacher who had come to distrust a narrow and rigid approach to Christian faith. The sermon is framed as a public appeal: Fosdick asks whether American Protestantism will allow a resurgent fundamentalism to set the terms of Christian fellowship and denominational life. He treats the question as urgent not merely because doctrines were debated, but because the outcome would determine whether churches remained open to intellectual inquiry, science, and a humane, progressive social witness.
Fosdick’s central claim is that the modern, liberal-minded Christians he represents are motivated by reverence as deep as that of the fundamentalists, yet they understand Scripture and doctrine differently. Rather than attacking the Bible as useless, Fosdick argues that many devout people see the Bible as a human record of the unfolding of God’s work in history, full of spiritual truth but also shaped by ancient culture, mythic forms, and developmental religious insight. From that perspective, certain doctrines long treated as literal facts (for example, the virgin birth or early expectations about Christ’s imminent return) ought to be rethought in light of historical criticism, science, and the moral demands of the present age. He urges that fidelity to Christ can coexist with interpretive openness to historical and intellectual advances.
Stylistically Fosdick balances pastoral warmth and rhetorical conviction. He explicitly rejects caricatures: he says he does not regard fundamentalists as lacking piety, and he insists that modernists are not indifferent to doctrine. His rhetorical aim is to open a “big tent” of Christian fellowship rather than to settle every point of dogma by disciplinary fiat. Fosdick portrays the contest as between an ecclesial posture that would police beliefs and one that would preserve the church as a place of moral and spiritual formation open to new knowledge and methods of interpretation.
On specific theological points, Fosdick points to how earlier Christians expressed religious conviction in the forms available to them. He treated the virgin birth and apocalyptic expectations not primarily as modern theological litmus tests but as ancient ways of speaking about Christ’s uniqueness and hope for the future. He suggested that insisting on literalist readings of such passages as conditions for fellowship threatens to make allegiance to certain historical formulations a test for membership in the Christian community, an approach he sees as both theologically unnecessary and pastorally damaging.
The sermon did not occur in a vacuum; Fosdick’s words lit a fuse. “Shall the Fundamentalists Win?” became one of the signature moments of the fundamentalist–modernist controversy of the 1920s. Conservatives read the sermon as an assault on the historic Christian faith; moderates and liberals read it as a courageous defense of the church’s intellectual freedom and social mission. Fosdick’s public profile and his position at a major New York pulpit made the sermon a flashpoint: within months and years, the controversy produced institutional battles, most famously actions within Presbyterian judicatory bodies and the intervention of figures such as J. Gresham Machen, who argued that liberal theology amounted to a different religion and should not be permitted in seminaries or on denominational pulpits.
Historically, Fosdick’s sermon is remembered for several durable consequences. First, it crystallized the modernist position into a clear public statement that could be defended and criticized. Second, it sharpened denominational conflicts that led to trials, resignations, and the reconfiguration of American Protestant institutions (some modernists leaving or being forced out; new conservative institutions and journals emerging). Third, it helped define a public theology that sought to harmonize faith with modern science, biblical scholarship, and social progressivism, an orientation that would shape central strands of twentieth-century Protestantism even as conservative movements reorganized themselves into more politically and institutionally effective forces.
Finally, the sermon’s legacy is mixed and complex. For Fosdick and his supporters the address remains a principled plea for a Christianity that could survive intellectual scrutiny and serve an evolving society. For opponents it symbolized an abandonment of essential Christian truths. Many historians treat the sermon as a hinge-point that made explicit the theological and institutional terms of a conflict already simmering, one whose repercussions continued through denominational realignments, new educational institutions, and the changing public role of religion in America. The phrase “Shall the Fundamentalists Win?” endures as shorthand for the larger question Fosdick posed: will the church make doctrinal uniformity the test of belonging, or will it preserve a space for diverse, thoughtful Christian witness?
The debates still reverberate.