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According to the "Law for the General Di~ection of Cults", of I 948, the Romanian Orthodox Church has no special privileges within the Romanian State; all discrimination between citizens on religious grounds is forbidden,· and the free practice of all cults is guaranteed. But of all these denominations the Orthodox Church has by far the most adherents; the faithful number 13,000,000, it is claimed, which is 65 per cent of the total population of Romania. So the Orthodox might be justified by numbers alone in seeking a special position within the State even if there~were not also historical and cultural reasons for it. The State is communist and atheistic, and in theory, of course, the Church is completely separated from the State, yet in practice it has a position which amounts almost to establishment. In 1968 there were 8,600 parishes with 9,400 priests whose salaries are met in part by State funds, as are the salaries of the professors in the two theological institutes in Bucharest and Sibiu. State scholarships are awarded to studentS at these institutes, and State funds are also used to finance the administrative personnel of the Patriarchate. With so much help from the State, the Church is able to organise for its clergy a complete Social Insurance scheme comparable to that of the State, with pensions, medical assistance, rest-homes by the sea and holiday houses in the mountains. Such facts are proof that the Church is not merely tolerated within an officially atheistic, communist State, but that it has a positive role which is recognised and encouraged by the secular leaders. The reasons for this are several; firstly, the Romanian Orthodox Church, in common with many other churches of Eastern Europe, is an intensely national Church. Its clergy, by participating in any event of any importance to an emerging nation ever since the fourteenth century, made a great contribution both tothe moulding of a Romanian national consciousness, and to the forma~ tion of Romanian culture, especially through educational activities, and through the printing and dissemination of books. At a different level Orthodox theology and liturgy have entered the folk-lore of a nation with strong peasant traditions, and which still has large numbers of workers on the land. The large numbers of young people who attend the Easter Liturgies in spite of the intense political indoctrination to which they are subjected in the course of their studies; testify to a feeling of national solidarity which goes deeper than the dictates of the intellect. The televising of

DURING the summer of 1959, a charming elderly lady of my acquaintance, related by marriage to the former ruling family of Yugoslavia, died. The following summer I was invited to attend a memorial service performed in her name. The date was the 12 June, corresponding to 30 May in the older Calendar followed by the Serbian Orthodox Church. The celebration took place in the municipal cemetery in Belgrade. It was, in fact, an anniversary celebration of one year since the time of death. My hostess remarked that the death of her aunt was altogether unfortunate, but not entirely ill-timed, in that it had fallen only a few days after the yearly celebration of the Descent of the Holy Spirit, a time known as Duhovi, where requiem masses for the deceased are performed with great solemnity between 4 and 7 June. The morning, a Monday, was extremely warm. I was carrying, in order to aid my hostess, two bottles of wine, a large cake of sweetened, boiled wheat known as Zito, and a jar of honey. My hostess, her husband and the housemaid were all similarly laden, with the further addition of three loaves of bread stamped with the seal of Our Lord in two places, a number of smaller, round buns similarly stamped, glasses, plates, linen and spoons, but no knives and forks, which were taboo for the occasion.

Eleven years after the third World Conference on Faith and Order at Lund, the fourth in the series (and, some have suggested, the last) was held in July 1963, at McGill University, Montreal, by invitation of the Canadian Council of Churches and with the active and welcoming participation of a Montreal Arrangements Committee. 498 persons attended the conference. 240 of these were delegates of the churches, 18 youth delegates, and 46 advisers invited by the W.C.C. There were 15 observers from non-member churches, including 5 from Roman Catholic Church, 3 from the Lutheran Church (Missouri Synod), and 1 from the Serbian Orthodox Church. There were 65 official guests, the great majority of whom had been invited through the good offices of the Canadian Council of Churches and the N.C.C.C.U.S.A. In all, 138 member and non-member churches of the W.C.C. were represented. Nor should we forget to mention in this list the 32 interpreters and translators who gave us their usual splendid service, and the 21 stewards who came at their own expense and who by their energetic work made the whole proceedings possible. It is well known that from the ranks of the youth delegates and stewards of one conference comes the chairman of the next conference but one, so that we should feel happy that the younger generation was so well represented at Montreal.

There has been a marked deterioration i'n church-state relations in Yugoslavia in the past year as a direct result of the illiberal domestic policy, pursued by the Tito regime since the sacking of the liberal communist party leadership in Croatia, the country's second largest republic, in December 1971. It is probably still too early to say whether this is merely a temporary setback, or· the erosion of the unique and, on the whole, successful modus vivendi between the communist state and the Qhristian churches in Yugoslavia---especially the two biggest, the Serbian O'rthodox and the Roman Catholic which, between them, account for two-thirds of the country's total population. But the outlook is far from encouraging. On the surface, there has been little or no change. Relations between the government and the Serbian Orthodox Church are correct, if not cordial. They were quite satisfactory immediately after the war-as far as that was possible within the framework of a militant communist regimebut became cooler in 1967 when the Serbian Orthodox Church refused to recognise the newly organized Macedonian Church, on the grounds that, to split off Macedonia from Serbia was a politically inspired act. The socalled Belgrade protocol-an agreement between Yugoslavia and the Vatican-which was signed in 1966, is also in force. That agreement, which took some 6 years to negotiate, permitted the Roman Catholic Church in Yugoslavia to re-open some of its seminaries, which had been closed since 1945, and to expand its publishing activity. In return the church was to accept the existing political system. Both the Vatican and the Tito regime seem anxious to preserve this agreement. The Vatican is probably hoping that the latter-the "Belgrade model"-will aid the negotiating of similar agreements with other east European communist regimes. The Tito government is clearly anxious to retain the Vatican's goodwill, an important consideration since Italy is Yugoslavia's second most important trading partner in the Common Market. More importantly, perhaps, the Yugoslav leaders do not want to drive the churches

The recent schism of the Serbian Orthodox Church in America provided a test situation for determining the causes of schism from field data. There were no differences in religious beliefs and practice between the two groups. However, differences between the feuding factions are evident in recency of migration, educational achievement, mobility in the U.S., and political party affiliation. Therefore, this schism appears to be a reflection of antagonisms of non-religious origin although expressed in religious division.

aris al-Shidyaq, in later life known as Ahmad Faris, is the most curious Arab literary personality of the 19th Century. He was born in the Lebanon in 1804. His family belonged to the Maronite church, which is in communion with Rome; since the Ottoman Empire was an Islamic theocratic state, confessional loyalties were extremely important in it, and-not least among the minorities-religious authorities were entrusted with considerable powers over members of their communities. In the early 1820's, the American Presbyterian Mission became active in the Lebanon. An elder brother of Faris al-Shidyaq's, called As'ad, was attracted to its teachings, fell foul of the bishop in whose service he was, and as a result was incarcerated for some six years and died while in durance in 1830. In the meantime, Faris had been sent to Egypt to teach American missionaries, and while there he perfected his knowledge of Arabic and found employment on the staff of Egypt's official Gazette, the forerunner of Arab journalism. Still in the service of Protestant missionaries, he went to Malta in 1834 and eventually-much affected by what he called his brother's martyrdom-he himself became a Protestant. In Malta he was Director of the American Missionary Press and taught Arabic in some schools, but he seems to have been able to absent himself from his posts fairly frequently, and in 1848 he finally left for London, where he collaborated-none too happily-with Dr. Lee in the translation of the Bible into Arabic.

The schism within the Serbian Orthodox Church in America began in 1963. It is hypothesized that the success of this schism was due to the anomie of Serbian immigrants who came to the United States after World War II. These recent immigrants experienced status degradation by achieving inferior positions in American society compared to the positions they occupied in Yugoslavia along with a lack of influence in the larger Serbian ethnic group. The differential perception of the primary functions of the Serbian Church by the two factions offers empirical evidence of the strains and conflicts within the group which made schism possible. There were no differences in the religious beliefs and practices of the two groups.