In view of the burdens only recently assumed as chairman of the Sociology Department at Loyola University, I agreed to accept the Presidency of the Religious Research Association one year ago with considerable misgivings. My worst fears were exceeded ten-fold in the passing months. Increased student enrollment, university committee assignments, faculty shortages, a new urban studies program, research in urban renewal and in our professional schools -- these were the major complications in my university life. The wrenching, abrasive problems of metropolitan growth, change, and mixture in a city like Chicago at this point in time impose never-ending demands on a sociologist. I have come to learn more and more that an urban sociologist seems to many to be the Medicine Man of the Twentieth Century.

For so many reasons, then, I owe profound thanks to the Board of Directors, the working committees, the people who worked out details for this and regional meetings. In a special way, Miss Doris Hoel, our dedicated Secretary, receives my thanks for her indispensable services to the RRA.

One year ago, Walter Kloetzli raised the question of inter-faith research projects needing to be explored. The incorporation of the Center for the Scientific Study of Religion (based at the Chicago Theological Seminary) is a hopeful sign. Under its auspices, an ambitious research program into the impact on religious bodies of the SCLC civil rights drive in Chicago has been launched. Discussions with related groups (e.g., the Society for the Scientific Study of Religion, the American Catholic Sociological Society) indicate the need for continuing exploration of common, overlapping interests. The ecumenical currents so strongly astir in the world give great hope for the future to all of us who seek greater cooperation in interfaith research and programming.

Dr. Lauris Whitman, former President of the RRA, honors us as H. Paul Douglass Lecturer this year. In 1967 in Chicago, Father Francois Houtart, General Secretary of the International Federation for Social and Socio-Religious Research, Louvain, Belgium, will be the H. Paul Douglass lecturer.

I urge your continued support of RRA and the Review of Religious Research, our official journal, as well as the annual and regional meetings. I ask your indulgence for my involuntary over-involvements noted above, even as I thank you for your gracious kindness to me.

Respectfully submitted,

Paul Mundy