"The fundamentalist movement is not new," The Very Reverend Edmund S. Rousmaniere '83, dean of St. Paul's Cathedral in Boston, told a CRIMSON reporter yesterday. "The present outbreak in all denominations of Protestant churches is merely an indication on the surface of a battle which has been waged for centuries."

Dr. Rousmaniere expressed the opinion that the present fundamental movement is a reactionary result of the liberal thought fostered by the war. As for the heralded "rift in the Episcopal Church" he was positive that no such thing would occur." Ever since the sixteenth century, there have been two parties, liberal and conservative, in the church. It is the old difference of high church and low church."

Agrees With Liberal Group

In the present controversy, Dr. Rousmaniere is in perfect agreement with the Modern Churchmen's Union, the organ of the liberal Episcopal group. "We can no longer hold a conception of God which reigned at the time the creeds were formulated," he said. "We have advanced to what we call a deeper conception." The fundamentalist insists on belief in facts about God; the liberal holds that belief in the idea of God is all important.

Battle Is Between Freedom and Dogma

The battle is one between freedom and dogma, between the adjustment of religion to our knowledge and the rejection of knowledge because it does not fit into a theology centuries old. "You men at Harvard," he continued, "are little concerned with the theological questions of any particular church. You care very little for the details of a controversy over the action of certain Bishops, or the heresy of a minister or even the division of a church. But most of you are deeply interested in religion in an abstract way." He concluded by saying that college men think for themselves, not about dogmas and theology, but about conceptions of God.