Feeble Churches

How strong, financially and socially, are the 210,000 churches of all denominations in the U. S.? What manner of men fill their pulpits? Of what stamp are the seminaries which turn out these keepers of souls year after year?

Questions like these were answered for Protestants last week in a four-volume report on "The Education of American Ministers" written by Dr. William Adams Brown of Union Theological Seminary and Dr. Mark Arthur May of Yale's Institute of Human Relations. A three-year job, their survey was sponsored by the Conference of Theological Seminaries & Colleges and the Institute of Social & Religious Research which, under able Dr. Galen Fisher, collected facts for the Laymen's Foreign Missions Inquiry. Some findings:

P: To support a well-trained minister a church should have at least 350 members. Only 13% of white Protestant churches meet this standard. There are at least 85,000 "feeble" churches unable to keep a full-time pastor, trained or untrained. Probably less than one-fourth of the churches have seminary graduates as full-time pastors; less than one-sixth have pastors with both seminary and college training. About half the U. S. Protestant pastors have neither sort of training.

P: A pastor has a right to "a decent living." In 1928 the average one got $1,407 --about the wage of a semiskilled worker. Salary problems are complicated by the fact that there is an ample supply of trained ministers, an oversupply of 40,000 to 50,000 untrained ones.

P: A theological seminary should maintain standards as rigorous as those of first-class law and medical schools. Standards are at present "chaotic."

P:The general educational level of the Protestant ministry has been declining in the past century.

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