New Riverside Pastor's Compensation Splits Congregation.

Longstanding tensions among parishioners at the renowned Riverside Church erupted again this week as a group of congregants went to court to stop the installation of a new senior pastor whose compensation package, they say, exceeds $600,000 a year. In a motion filed in State Supreme Court in Manhattan, the group said that the new pastor, the Rev. Dr. Brad R. Braxton, and the church board that selected him last September after a yearlong search, had dismissed their calls for transparency in financial matters. They also complained that Dr. Braxton was moving Riverside away from its tradition of interracial progressivism and toward a conservative style of religious practice. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]