Religion in the World

Patriarch Pimen of Moscow and all the Russias has been enthroned as the fourth head of the Russian Orthodox Church since the fall of the czars fifty-four years ago. Three well-rehearsed choirs in different parts of Moscow’s Yelokhovsky Cathedral chanted throughout the four-hour enthronement service.

The Reverend Reinhold Niebuhr, seventy-eight, leading Protestant theologian, died recently at Stockbridge, Massachusetts. Dr. Niebuhr, a giant of Protestant philosophy, believed man is born with pride as the original sin; the sin is inescapable and will lead man to bigotry and prejudices. “The tragedy of man,” he said, “is that he can conceive self-perfection but cannot achieve it.”

Parochial and other nonpublic schools throughout New York are to receive an additional $33 million in state financial aid in the 1971–72 school year to help meet the costs of “secular educational service.”

Unless Protestant seminaries find new sources of money, “Theological education faces imminent financial disaster,” said Bishop J. Brook Moseley, president of New York’s Union Theological Seminary, in his inaugural address. There are about 140 Protestant seminaries in the United States—many of which will not survive the current recession. The gloom has spread even to the prestige Bible schools. In the 1950s, foundations willingly gave generous support to them. But in the ’70s, the foundations have little money for theological training.

Largely because the “PG” rating—all ages admitted, parental guidance suggested—has become unreliable, the major Protestant and Roman Catholic film agencies are withdrawing support from the rating system used by the Motion Picture Association.

Lamenting the plight of the Methodists in England, Christian Century said last spring: “A survey of 2,477 local churches indicates that 61 percent of them have fewer than 30 members, and 19 percent fewer than ten. Only 18 of the 110 rural circuits showed increased membership during the period 1958–68, and recruitment of local preachers (the mainstay of leadership) has declined by almost one-third during the past five years.” Membership in Baptist churches throughout the British Isles has fallen 14 percent in the past decade. Last year the membership fell from 274,871 to 269,065.

The Vatican has sent to Roman Catholic bishops throughout the world a document that says man should have “the right to living conditions worthy of man, the right of every human being to a living space adequate to man.” This document also lists freedom to search for truth and God and “the right to obey the voice of one’s conscience (and to worship God according to one’s own feelings)” as basic human rights.