In the Churches

In the following places the following churchmen made news last week:

In London, Very Rev. William Ralph ("The Gloomy Dean") Inge set a definite date--Oct. 2--to his retirement from St. Paul's Cathedral. At 74, Dean Inge is in good health, but so deaf as to be tortured by the half sounds of music. Born of a solid ecclesiastical family, he is a low churchman, an arch-Tory, a rabble-hater. His successor, whose appointment the Dean recommended to his King, is Very Rev. Walter Robert Matthews, 53, dean of Exeter Cathedral. An able theologian and philosophy professor, Dr. Matthews is a religious modernist and far from gloomy. His latest book is a reply to Britain's unorthodox pundit: The Adventures of Gabriel in His Search of Mr. Shaw. This year he scandalized his diocese and caused a "petition of regret" to be circulated when he sponsored a series of Lenten lectures in the Cathedral by Nonconformists.

In Des Moines, Iowa was installed Most Rev. Gerald Thomas Bergan as Roman Catholic bishop succeeding the late Most Rev. Thomas Drumm. Born in Peoria 42 years ago, Bishop Bergan has been priest, chancellor, vicar general in that diocese. An able athlete in college (St. Viator, Bourbonnais, Ill.), he was a brilliant student at North American College in Rome, where he was ordained in 1915.

In Oxford, Ohio met the 76th general assembly of the United Presbyterian Church, with which the Presbyterian Church in the U. S. A. last month expressed willingness to merge (TIME, June 11). A candidate for moderator was Dr. Francis Scott McBride, national superintendent of the Anti-Saloon League. The United Presbyterians, however, gave a clear majority to Rev. Dr. John Alvin Orr, 59, suave, well-dressed pastor of Pittsburgh's wealthy First Church and president of that city's Citizens' League. Two days later the assembly voted 123-to-113 against submitting to the 67 presbyteries of the United Church the proposal to merge with the Presbyterian Church of the U. S. A. C,

In Calcutta leaders of the international Theosophist Society, headless since the death of Mrs. Annie Besant last year (TIME, Oct. 2), elected as their new president Dr. George Sidney Arundale, 55, rugged onetime bishop of the Liberal Catholic Church in Australia. Long a student of Theosophy which at some points duplicates the occult tenets of Liberal Catholicism, Dr. Arundale has been a pedagog in India, a member of the Worshipful Company of Pewterers, a Freeman of the City of London. He once tutored sallow Jeddu Krishnamurti whom Mrs. Besant hailed as a messiah. Year ago Dr. Arundale brought his pretty Hindu wife to the U. S. on a lecture tour. In stalled in office last week with much cere mony, he seemed unafraid of a fiasco such as befell Mrs. Besant when her Hindu messiah renounced his beliefs. Announcing plans for a new world religion based on Theosophy, Dr. Arundale also predicted the coming of another messiah.

In Oberlin, Ohio, at a meeting of the General Council of the Congregational and Christian Churches, devout Statistician Roger Ward Babson presented results of his four-year study of church attendance. In 1,000 Congregational churches, said he, pews were 70% vacant. Only 42% of the communicants supported their churches by attendance or otherwise. Attendance varies inversely with the size of communities, the urban Eastern States averaging the lowest (36%) and the rural Southeastern States the highest (78%).

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