Word: mccrackens
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...long jet delta wings gleamed in the sunlight like anchors for interplanetary fleets. Robert Grosvenor's 24-ft.-long yellow Still No Title lanced downward from a portico of the museum building like a bolt of sunlight, ending a breath-taking eight inches from the pavement. John McCracken's brilliant blue column reflected shades upon shades of the California ethos; Lyman Kipp's Muscoot piled reds, greens, blues and yellows jauntily together like an enterprising architect's leftover bundle of construction beams...
Both Fosdick* and McCracken are Baptists-but there the similarity ends. A fiery orator and prolific writer who thrived on controversy, Fosdick became the focus of the modernist-fundamentalist battles of the 1920s by questioning the Virgin Birth and the literal truth of Scripture, later gained a national following as a radio preacher. Theologically more conservative, McCracken, 63, seldom made the headlines despite his pulpit support for such causes as civil rights and peace in Viet Nam, but has a widespread reputation among the clergy as a preacher's preacher. Other ministers consider him a classic orator...
Wealth & Heresy. Even today, some of McCracken's old parishioners still refer to Riverside as "Fosdick's church," and with some reason: it was built for him by John D. Rockefeller Jr. After Fosdick, charged with heresy, had resigned from Manhattan's First Presbyterian Church in 1925, Rockefeller offered him the pulpit of the Park Avenue Baptist Church, of which he was a trustee. When Fosdick hesitated, Rockefeller asked him why. "Because I do not want to be known as the pastor of the richest man in the country," Fosdick said. Answered Rockefeller: "Do you think more...
...cost of more than $5,000,000, Rockefeller happily created Riverside Church-a stately imitation of Chartres Cathedral, whose 22-story bell tower dominates Morningside Heights. During Fosdick's pastorate, the church ministered primarily to the intellectual community near Columbia. Under McCracken, Riverside has become involved in trying to solve the problems of a declining neighborhood. Membership-now at an alltime high of 3,500-includes Negro and Puerto Rican poor as well as university professors. The church's seven-man staff of ministers has helped sponsor integrated housing, runs a preschool program and adult-education classes...
Trace of a Burr. A sprightly Scot who speaks with a trace of a burr, McCracken estimates that he has delivered more than 5,000 sermons since deciding to become a minister, at the age of 17, upon hearing a lecture by a visiting Congo missionary. McCracken, who held pastorates in Edinburgh and Glasgow and taught at Canada's McMaster University before coming to Riverside, firmly believes that "a theology that isn't preached has something lacking." He argues that the Biblical message has not lost its relevance and provides an antidote to what he calls...