THE SOCIAL IS PERSONAL: HARRY EMERSON FOSDICK, THE RIVERSIDE CHURCH, AND THE SOCIAL GOSPEL IN THE GREAT DEPRESSION A Dissertation Submitted to the Temple University Graduate Board In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY __________________________________________________________________ by Gregory Kipp Gilmore-Clough January, 2014 Examining Committee Members: Rebecca Alpert, Advisory Chair, Temple University Department of Religion John C. Raines, Temple University Department of Religion Terry Rey, Temple University Department of Religion David Watt, Temple University Department of History Beth Bailey, External Member, Temple University Department of History © Copyright 2014 by Gregory Kipp Gilmore-Clough All Rights Reserved ii ABSTRACT This project follows recent scholarship that challenges an older paradigm of the social gospel tradition’s demise after World War I. It undertakes a multifaceted analysis of Harry Emerson Fosdick, his local and national audiences, and his context of The Riverside Church—as building and as congregation—as a means of tracing the contours of the social gospel through the Great Depression. Fosdick was an internationally known liberal Protestant minister who was prominent in efforts to rearticulate the social gospel and maintain its relevance in the postwar period. He grounded his interpretation of the social gospel in personalist philosophy, which asserted individual personality as irreducible, yet also shaped within social networks. Personalism manifested liberal Protestantism’s emphasis on experience, pairing well with the interest in psychology that burgeoned in the early twentieth century, and which was prominent in Fosdick’s preaching and writing. I refer to this threefold convergence of liberal theology, social gospel critique and activism, and personalist philosophy as social gospel personalism. While social gospel personalism promoted activity to bring about social change, I find within it a rhetorical tendency to prioritize attention to the psychological development of personality as the primary means through which the aim of transforming society would be met. In this dissertation, I attend to the ways in which social gospel personalism as articulated by Fosdick and embodied in The Riverside Church was particularly classed, with attendant blind spots and limitations, while simultaneously serving to provide its white, middle class adherents with a religious grounding that helped them weather a period of acute social and economic upheaval. iii Recent scholarship on American religious liberalism seeks to move beyond the narratives of Protestantism, but I argue that Fosdick and Riverside, by virtue of their cultural prominence, represent an important attempt to find personal grounding amidst depersonalizing social currents, and a religious vocabulary for critiquing those social forces that diminished the person. To make this argument, I engage social gospel personalism from multiple angles. I begin with an analysis of Fosdick’s preaching and writing, situating him within the social gospel tradition and tracing the presence of personalist thought throughout his message. I then consider Fosdick as a mediated phenomenon, allowing an examination of the ways in which his message was received and utilized by his multiple audiences, suggesting that the dynamics of mediation tended to heighten the individual, existential elements of Fosdick’s message. In turning to the Riverside Church itself, I interpret the building as a site within which social gospel personalism was embodied and enabled, attending to the utilization of space as both reflective of and formative of religious practice. Finally, I analyze two of Riverside’s programmatic responses to the vast unemployment engendered by the Great Depression as a means of illuminating the ways in which social gospel personalism was and was not prepared to meet the crisis. iv For Cathy, for everything v ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I read things that many people skip over. As a member of that seemingly declining breed of individuals who purchase entire albums in compact disc form, I read the liner notes of every single album that makes its way into my home. Likewise, if I have obtained a book in exchange for money, the chances are greater than even that I will also invest some time in scanning the acknowledgments. This is true even though the overwhelming majority of these are comprised of lists of the names of people I have never met, nor ever shall. It is a humbling reminder that no finished product is a solitary creation. Indeed, if the numerous compilers of acknowledgments are trustworthy guides, it is a truism that no project is completed by a single person, springing full-formed like Athena from the head of Zeus; many voices, explicit and implicit, are required in the processes of gestation, fruition, completion. A related truism absolves those co-creators of blame, confessing all shortcomings of a project as the author’s own. Writing this dissertation has made these sentiments real to me in a way that reading acknowledgments pages can only hint at. At the risk of becoming a purveyor of cliches, I must appeal to both. More people than I can count made this dissertation possible; some of them deserve especial attention for their contributions. At the same time, those who carry this project’s virtues hold none of the responsibility for its failings, which belong to me alone. My experience in Temple University’s Department of Religion has been a rich one. This has been my third iteration as a Temple student, and each turn around the wheel has proved to be even better than the one before. In particular, I owe my unending thanks to my advisor, Rebecca Alpert. It is not an overstatement to say that, without her, this vi project would never have been finished. Her honest and wise feedback and her genuine encouragement every step of the way were utterly invaluable. The rest of my committee has likewise been uniformly helpful. John Raines taught the first seminar I took in the Religion Department—on Reinhold Niebuhr—along with several other courses, and has never been less that utterly generous with his insights. Terry Rey and David Watt have each demonstrated to me what it means to fill the dual roles of scholar and teacher. And my external reader, Beth Bailey, graciously offered her time and energy. There are, of course, others who have likewise enriched this latest Temple experience. Linda Jenkins, department coordinator par excellence, always made sure that I was administratively settled, preventing headaches with her knowledge of systems and her attention to detail. More than once, Fred Rowland at Paley Library connected me with resources that I needed but couldn’t figure out how to access on my own. And a community of scholars and friends helped both to broaden my knowledge and to remind me that there is more to life than academics. David Krueger warrants special attention, not only for conversations on shared scholarly interests, but for the years of friendship that preceded my entrance into this program. Others who have offered wisdom, knowledge, perspective, companionship, and/or witty Facebook status updates include Tricia Way, Sean Sanford, Ed Godfrey, Ermine Algaier, Beth Lawson, Kime Lawson, Karen Schnitker, Kin Cheung, and Brian McAdams. Outside of the Temple crowd, Christy Croxall deserves profound thanks for her generous friendship and for weekly phone calls that helped me maintain my sanity. A researcher does not proceed very far without archives, and an archive reflects the character of its archivist. In this regard, I was privileged to have access to several vii exceedingly useful archives. The bulk of my archival sources were found in The Burke Library Archive at Union Theological Seminary, where Ruth Tonkiss Cameron offered her time and perspective in several very enlightening conversations, and where Betty Bolden tirelessly pulled boxes from shelves, talked with me about what I was finding, and never failed to offer a warm, genuine. Brad Jones at The Riverside Church, too, surely has earned a star in his crown. Brad wears far too many hats as a volunteer at Riverside; when the church’s longtime archivist died in 2012, Brad added one more responsibility to his multitudinous array. Nancy Adgent at the Rockefeller Archive Center likewise was very helpful in connecting me with fruitful documents. To my parents, Charles and Charlotte Gilmore, I owe a debt of gratitude beyond my ability to repay. I will leave it at this: for the constant encouragement to do what I love, to offer the best I can wrangle from myself, and to find satisfaction in the effort alone, I give my thanks. I can’t help but note, further, that each parent is reflected here in my words, even when those words have nothing whatsoever to do with them. From my father I have inherited a knack for placing words together in effective partnership, and from my mother a love, bordering on the obsessive, for the internal workings of the English language; the engineer is a poet, the yarn artist a linguistic architect, and I hope to have honored each. Finally, Cathy Gilmore-Clough deserves far more than the sentences that I can offer here. She has sustained me throughout this long process in ways material and immaterial. Since mere words can’t capture what I owe, I offer only these few: This is for you. And, I love you. viii TABLE OF CONTENTS Page ABSTRACT ......................................................................................................................