Though [the Rev. Brad Braxton was] chosen last September out of 200 applicants to be Riverside’s sixth senior minister, the former Rhodes scholar saw strife from day one. In April, four church members unsuccessfully sued to block his installation, alleging violations of church bylaws relating to his compensation package.
The soaring church, built by tycoon John D. Rockefeller Jr., on Manhattan’s Upper West Side in 1927, has become renowned for its interracial and interdenominational brand of preaching and social justice.
The parish of my father’s parents, in which his father played a huge early role–sad to read this.
[i]Braxton’s evangelical and scripturally focused preaching was also an issue, which some saw as a threat to Riverside’s open and inclusive reputation.[/i]
Truly ironic. I wonder what Harry Emerson Fosdick would have made of that.
[url=http://catholicandreformed.blogspot.com]Catholic and Reformed[/url]
I was just about to post that quote, #1. Further:[blockquote]In his letter of resignation to the congregation, Braxton said he came to Riverside “to serve as pastor and to promote serious engagement with Scripture that would reignite the spiritual inspiration underlying the church’s social activism.”[/blockquote]This is very sad, because this is exactly what TEC needs, too — to understand the spiritual inspiration for its “good works” programs, and to have a widespread and serious engagement with Scripture.
The issue of the serious engagement with Scripture does indeed sound like the crisis point, as evidently is the racial issue among some there in a tragic way. In the larger picture, Riverside is a church with the ideal everything – carillon, pipe organ, architecture, endowment, stained glass. Imagine it! All intended to keep the Christian ideals of the founders enshrined by throwing money at them. As with TEC Riverside has drifted far away from its roots and I suppose the object lesson for us is to spend our money on worthy causes of the present and be wary of endowing or over-architecture-izing our ideals.
[i]Cure Thy children’s warring madness,
Bend our pride to Thy control.
Shame our wanton selfish gladness,
Rich in things and poor in soul.
Grant us wisdom, grant us courage,
Lest we miss Thy kingdom’s goal.
Save us from weak resignation,
To the evils we deplore.
Let the search for Thy salvation,
Be our glory evermore.
Grant us wisdom, grant us courage,
Serving Thee Whom we adore.[/i]
I must confess I’ve always had a fondness for Fosdick.
The church’s website does not mention this. I think that is a mistake.
Hmmm. I’m not well informed about this sad conflict within what is arguably the most prestigious liberal church in America, but I’ll offer a couple rather tangential remarks.
First, [i] “How are the mighty fallen!” [/i] Or, the bigger they are, the harder they fall. Like the nearby headquarters of the National Church of Churches, Riverside Church appears that it may have lost its way by drifting from the biblical moorings that its founders, Fosdick and Rockefeller, took for granted. And so has nearby Union Seminary. All three prominent institutions once represented liberal Protestantism at its best in many ways. But the glory days are over.
Harry Emerson Fosdick and William Sloane Coffine are long gone from Riverside. Reinhold Niebuhr and Paul Tillich are long gone from Union Seminary. And so are the days when the NCC sponsored the translation of the RSV, or Eugene Carson Blake championed real ecumenical convergence. You can write “Ichabod” over all three.
Second, what about that stunning revelation that Praxton’s compensation package was to be around $600K? Let’s not allow that amazing fact to slip by unnoticed. I have no idea what their previous senior pastor, James Forbes, was paid, but even by the skyscraper-high standards of Manhattan, there is something incredibly ironic and scandalous about a congregation that prides itself as a prophetic champion of social justice paying its minister over a half million dollars a year.
Now yeah, I know that may be mostly the value of the housing portion of his compensation package. given the astronomically high cost of housing on the Upper West Side. But the fact remains that a church that boasts of its passion for social justice was somehow willing to pay such an outrageously exorbitant amount. The irony is just mind-boggling.
Of course, I guess Riverside’s famed, well-heeled ministers could have quoted the governing board at least one bit of Scripture that seems to have stuck: [i] “The poor you will always have with you; but you will not always have me.” [/i]
David Handy+
I attended Riverside one Sunday in 1999. I was completely confused by the service (which included a couple of kids getting “dedicated,” while three others were baptized). However, the sermon by James Forbes was great. It was on Elijah’s suicidal despair under the “broom” tree, and included references to a low period, many years before, in the preacher’s life. During the finish Dr. F remembered the exact moment when the sadness left him. At the time he was walking with Fr. Raymond J. Brown (recently passed at the time of the sermon) through the tunnel leading from Riverside campus, and he found himself humming a tune. Then suddenly Dr. Forbes broke into song and came down into the congregation to invite those who desired God’s intervention to stand and sing with him. It was very moving. I was able to purchase a tape of the sermon immediately afterward in the gift shop. They must have a pretty elaborate sound studio. I have an overall negative opinion of Riverside and the Liberal appeal to the intellectually aspirational class that Fosdick inherited from von Harnack, but I’ll never forget that sermon.
I went with a Confirmation class to Riverside in March. It was a very powerful service. The music was great, the sermon by Rev. Braxton. was excellent and the young people were very moved by his asking the entire congregation to stand and hold hands and pray at the end of the service. Seeing a large, ethnically diverse congregation do that had a big impact on them which they mentioned in their response papers.
I am sorry for the troubles there, although I think the congregation gave that excellent preacher and pastor, James Forbes, troubles too.
I will keep Rev. Braxton and the congregation in prayer.