Radio Religion

P: A Philadelphia professional woman: ''Last year it was made clear to me that my husband had an affair with a married woman. . . . Please use some theme Sunday morning which you think would bear on the remorse and regret which will follow if homes are wrecked by such relationships."

P: A Massachusetts nurse: "I looked to my minister for advice, but because the matter was so personal I resisted asking him outright. Therefore I am writing to you."

P: A South Dakota housewife: "I feel worried."

Each week 4,000-odd letters like these pour into the office of plain-speaking Dr. Ralph W. Sockman of the National Radio Pulpit. Rated by volume of fan mail. Methodist Sockman of Park Avenue's swank Christ Church is No. 1 Protestant radio pastor of the U.S.* Since good, grey, Congregationalist S. Parkes Cadman pioneered the field in 1923, radio religion has become a national institution, is preached to an estimated congregation of ten million.

Every Sunday morning at 10:00 (E.S.T.), NBC listeners are transported to a church of the air by the chords and tremolos of a studio organ, choristers singing such favorite hymns as Fairest Lord Jesus. After a simple prayer, well-groomed, grey-haired Dr. Sockman--who looks like a successful lawyer and talks like the man next door--preaches a sermon in everyday terms on subjects close to every listener: "Fears May Be Liars"; "How Easy Is Evil?''; "Does It Pay to Be Good?"

Nationwide Parish. Though requests for copies of sermons make up the bulk of it, Dr. Sockman's record-holding letter haul contains enough on personal problems and perplexities to give him a bird's-eye view of his nationwide parish. On the "current thinking of these parishioners, Dr. Sockman hazards these general conclusions:

P: ''Many Americans, facing the atomic age and the multiplicity of postwar problems, have lost confidence in free will and their ability to control their destiny.

P: "Under the pressure of mass living, maintenance of individual values has taken on new importance.

P: "Laymen, increasingly impatient with denominational divisions in U.S. Protestantism, want greater church unity on high policy-making levels.

P: "Americans as a whole--not only the minorities--recognize the need for greater religious and racial tolerance."

For Dr. Sockman, radio religion is no substitute for churchgoing. Says he: "Religion is like art, or music, or books. The more of it you get, the more you want." But radio religion, he believes, does nudge more people into church.

-Golden-voiced Msgr. Fulton J. Sheen, U.S. Catholicism's famed proselyter, pulls 3.000 to 6,000 letters a Sunday but is on the air only four months of the year.

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