Religion: A Bid to the Lonely

Dr. Frederick May Eliot, veteran (for 15 years) president of the American Unitarian Association, has his own estimate of the mood of orthodox Protestantism today: "Black reaction and black pessimism." The doctrine being emphasized, said Dr. Eliot at a Unitarian meeting in Cincinnati, "is one of absolute despair, which sets up as the only possible avenue of escape from cosmic disaster abject submission to deity, the unquestioned acceptance of religious authoritarian creeds, and the futility of human effort."

Unitarian Eliot noted with satisfaction that many in his church (membership: 80,000) and in the like-minded Universalist Church (membership: 65,000) favor a merger. But Dr. Eliot sees this as just a beginning: "Our greatest need is to . . . unite to ourselves in fraternal spirit the lonely, isolated liberal churches and individuals [in orthodox Protestantism]who might then comprise a 'United Liberal Church of America.'"