Celebrating FOR’s 100th Anniversary

The Fellowship of Reconciliation (FOR) is celebrating its 100^th anniversary this week in New York City.

FOR was launched as the result of a pact made by two Christians in August 1914, at the outset of the First World War. The two men, an English Quaker and a German Lutheran, had just arrived for a conference of Christian pacifists when hostilities broke out. 

Needing to return home immediately, as they were parting on a platform of the railway station in Cologne, Germany, they made this pledge to each other: “We are one in Christ and can never be at war.”

What a difference it would have made in world history if all the Christians in Europe had made that same pledge!

In late December of that year the Englishman, Henry Hodgkin, organized a conference in Cambridge at which 130 Christians of various denominations joined in the founding of the Fellowship of Reconciliation in England.

About a year later, in November 1915, FOR was begun in the United States by sixty-eight pacifists, including Jane Addams, the first woman to win the Nobel Peace Prize, about whom I wrote a few weeks ago.

Another of the organizers in the U.S. was Congregationalist minister A.J. Muste, who later became a Quaker and who served as executive secretary (now titled executive director) of FOR from 1940 to 1953.

One of Muste’s most cited statements is, “There is no way to peace; peace is the way.”
John Swomley served from 1953 to 1960 as FOR’s next executive secretary. In 1960 Swomley became a professor of social ethics at St. Paul’s School of Theology in Kansas City, where he taught until his retirement in 1984.

During those years he was the leader of the local branch of FOR, and in 1976-77 when we were back from Japan for a year and living in Liberty, I attended a few FOR meetings in Kansas City and became acquainted with Swomley and gained a greater appreciation for FOR.

Since 2013 the Executive Director of FOR-USA has been Kristin Stoneking, an ordained United Methodist Church minister. 

(Kristin’s father, John Stoneking, was once pastor of Rosedale United Methodist Church in Kansas City, Kansas; the same church building is now the home of Rainbow Mennonite Church where June and I are members.)

From 3 p.m. to 9:30 on Saturday there will be activities at Riverside Church in New York celebrating the 100th anniversary of FOR-USA.

The 75th anniversary in 1990 was also celebrated at Riverside Church with an interfaith service. (Adherents of non-Christian religions have been active participants in FOR for many years.)
Ten years ago, Paul R. Dekar, a seminary professor, authored Creating the Beloved Community: A Journey with the Fellowship of Reconciliation.

In Part I, Dekar describes six ways FOR challenges “the nexus of evil,” including “challenging the making of enemies.”

Dekar writes that FOR members “have sought to see so-called enemies as potential friends.” That statement reminded me of the well-known story about President Lincoln.

During the Civil War, Lincoln was criticized for speaking of benevolent treatment for the Southern rebels. The critic chided Lincoln, reminding him that there was a war going on, that the Confederates were the enemy and so they should be destroyed.

Lincoln’s wise response: “Do I not destroy my enemies when I make them my friends?”
FOR has not succeeded in bringing about reconciliation among all people. There is much yet to do. Still, the world is doubtlessly much better off because of FOR’s meritorious work over the past 100 years.

Happy Birthday, FOR—and best wishes for your next 100 years.

For the Living of These Days

October 5, 1930, was a big day for Harry Emerson Fosdick, pastor of the Riverside Church in New York City. It was the first worship service in Riverside’s new church building, one of the most magnificent structures in the United States. 

Although I have attended a Sunday service at Riverside only once, and that was probably around 30 years ago, I still remember being greatly impressed by the size and beauty of the building—as well as by the service itself.

(Sometime I’d like to tell you the story of how I rented a bicycle and peddled through Central Park and then through Harlem on my way to Riverside, near the bank of the beautiful Hudson River.)

Pastor Fosdick wrote a hymn for that dedication service, which was 85 years ago today. Here is the second verse of that hymn, “God of Grace and God of Glory,” which I assume many of you have sung:

Lo! the hosts of evil round us

scorn the Christ, assail his ways!

From the fears that long have bound us

free our hearts to faith and praise.

Grant us wisdom, grant us courage,

for the living of these days,

for the living of these days.

Fosdick, who was born on May 24, 1878, was one of the most influential pastors of the first half of the 1900s. Martin Luther King, Jr., characterized him as “the greatest preacher of the twentieth century.”

In 1922 Fosdick preached a sermon for which he is still widely known: “Shall the Fundamentalists Win?” He was one of the first vocal opponents of Christian fundamentalism—and was a primary target of the fundamentalists.

But Fosdick was also an opponent of liberalism, back when it was called “modernism.” In 1935 one of the most significant sermons he preached at Riverside Church was “The Church Must Go Beyond Modernism.”

While rejecting both fundamentalism and extreme liberalism, Fosdick was an advocate of the Social Gospel. Two years before the dedication of the new church building, Fosdick declared that a church

"that pretends to care for the souls of people but is not interested in the slums that damn them, the city government that corrupts them, the economic order that cripples them, and international relationships that, leading to peace or war, determine the spiritual destiny of innumerable souls’’ would receive divine condemnation (Hope of the World, p. 25).

Fosdick died on October 5, 1969, on the 39th anniversary of that notable first Sunday at Riverside Church, where he served as pastor until 1946.

One of Fosdick’s successors was William Sloane Coffin, who was the Senior Minister at Riverside from 1977 to 1987. (See my blog article about him here.) On Oct. 5, 1980, Coffin preached at the 50th anniversary of Riverside Church. Near the end of that sermon he declared, 

“Dearly beloved parishioners, we have no choice, we must work for the redistribution of wealth. We must abridge our luxuries for the sake of others’ necessities, in this city, in this land, and in the world” (The Collected Sermons of William Sloan Coffin: The Riverside Years, 2008, I:358).

Wealth had long been an issue at Riverside, for the new edifice, whose construction began in 1927, was largely funded by business magnate John D. Rockefeller, Jr. The dedication of that magnificent building, though, was almost a year following the beginning of the Great Depression.

So the powerful words of prayer in Fosdick’s hymn had great meaning in 1930: “Give us courage, give us wisdom, for the living of these days.” 

That’s still a good prayer for us today.