Questions

If a conscientious U. S. minister were to learn that the chief trouble of his parishioners was a sense of frustration, inadequacy, anxiety, loneliness, he might well feel discouraged, since to dispel such feelings is part of his job. Nevertheless, in Boston last week a survey was released which indicated that inner inadequacy is a prime characteristic of churchgoers--or at least of New England Protestant churchgoers. For five years, students of Dr. Harold Washington Ruopp, professor of preaching at Boston University School of Theology, asked churchfolk around Boston: What is the outstanding question that you face in your thinking and, living? Professor Ruopp's tabulation of nearly 5,000 replies was published last week in the Boston Transcript religious column of Dr. Albert Charles ("Dieff") Dieffenbach, who recommended it to preachers who wonder what they should preach.

Of the 5,000 churchgoers, 36% said they had no problems, a fact which Dr.

Dieffenbach dismissed as "absurd." Half of the rest were chiefly bothered by the above-mentioned frustrations. Personal problems such as whom to marry ranked second in this group. A "sense of sin," which used to worry New Englanders, appeared no longer to do so appreciably; it ranked ninth and last among inner problems.

Financial matters offered "outstanding questions" to 21% of the churchgoers--debts, unemployment, loss of property, etc.

The churchgoers appeared less concerned with social matters than their preachers and church organizations: only 15% were preoccupied with social injustice, the profit motive, the exploitation of natural resources.

Theological problems interested less than 14%. But of these problems, the nature of God, the meaning of religion, Jesus Christ, prayer, immortality offered the most perplexing "questions," in that order.

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