Reverence and Ritual

In the Protestant tradition of the Christian faith, we do not teach that the sacraments “do anything” in heaven. God does not save the baptized child or ignore the unbaptized . . . Water brought from the Jordan River in a little bottle might be a nifty souvenir of your trip, but it won’t make a better baptism. The rituals of ordination don’t make the ordained more holy or important or powerful. It would be easier to say what religion is about if we believed in magic, but all that is dead and gone for those mature in the faith.

Our Play

To be a Christian at Riverside, do you have to believe Jesus was born of a virgin? As many of you know, in the 1920s, some years before he began his ministry here, Dr. Harry Emerson Fosdick got himself and the Presbyterians into a marvelous snarl preaching No! You do not have to believe in the virgin birth.

In Over Our Head

My mother, of blessed memory, remarked for years on a vexing boldness in her once tiny third son, myself: at two or three years of age, before he knew anything of swimming, this little boy so loved the waters where we summered that he would walk right off the end of the wooden dock and plunge in over his head, apparently unaware or unconcerned that he would shortly need to be saved. And then would do it again, and even again. The act is recorded on home movies! Now, it might occur to some of you that he is telling this story because he has gone and done it again: plunged into the ecclesiastical waters down by The Riverside Church, apparently unaware that he might need to be saved—again!