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Harry Emerson Fosdick had a certain reputation. He was the theological "bad boy" of modernist theology when he stood at a lectern in the 1920s and delivered his famous sermon "Shall the Fundamentalists Win?". He was in New York City. One preacher, preaching one sermon. But this one talk spread all over the country and created real upset. Could modernist theology win in the Northern Presbyterian denomination?

J. Grescham Machen didn't think it should. He was a fundamentalist and wrote in response to Fosdick's sermon. But how does one keep out heresy?

The fundamentalists decided to call in a big-name Christian celebrity -- William Jennings Bryan. He was on a cross-country crusade to stop the teaching of evolution in public schools. Not because he didn't believe in science. He did. The problem that Bryan saw with teaching evolution in school was the cruelty that humanity would express if they believed they were nothing more than animals.

The battle between liberal and conservative Christians was a public one. William Jennings Bryan and Harry Emerson Fosdick wrote competing articles in The New York Times. Would it cause a split in the Northern Presbyterian denomination?

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