In 1914, he accepted a call from Arch Street Presbyterian Church in Philadelphia, a second congregation located in a deteriorating neighborhood.
This exchange, however, was merely a preface to their famous exchange in 1922, when Fosdick preached and distributed his famous sermon "Shall the Fundamentalists Win?" and Macartney responded with "Shall Unbelief Win?", thus setting off the Fundamentalist-Modernist Controversy in the PCUSA.