A divided congregation voted on Sunday to affirm the Rev. Dr. Brad R. Braxton, a Baptist minister and former Rhodes scholar, as the sixth senior pastor of Riverside Church, the soaring Gothic cathedral on the Upper West Side of Manhattan.
Dr. Braxton, 39, assumes the leadership in the wake of the long and sometimes fractious tenure of the Rev. Dr. James A. Forbes Jr., the first black senior pastor of the 78-year-old church, who drew criticism from congregants that he neglected Riverside’s tradition of liberal Protestant activism while pouring his energies into increasing black membership with a Southern style of preaching and worship.
Dr. Braxton was the unanimous choice of a parish selection committee that considered more than 200 candidates. He has called himself a “progressive evangelical.”
