Fosdick Debaptised

Few are the Baptists famed for liberalism in theology: first among them is Manhattan's Harry Emerson Fosdick. Many have wondered why he called himself a Baptist at all. The answer seemed to be: because he was pastor of the Park Avenue Baptist Church.

Last week the name of Preacher Fosdick's church ceased to be a misnomer. At a meeting of the congregation in the completed portion of the new $4,000,000 edifice which most-famed-member-of-the-congregation John Davison Rockefeller Jr. is building at Riverside Drive and 122nd Street (TIME, Dec. 31). it was announced that the Riverside Church was now its legal title. Though the alteration of title was agreed upon a year ago, no legal action could be taken until a New York State law preventing a religious corporation from changing its name was amended at the last session of the State Legislature. Fundamentalists who resented the use of the word "Baptist" in describing Preacher Fosdick's church, Modernists who felt the same way for different reasons, irreverents who have called the new church "Socony" in deference to Mr. Rockefeller's Standard Oil Co. of N. Y., all took notice.

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