The Rev. Richard W. Cain, 63, president...

The Rev. Richard W. Cain, 63, president of the School of Theology at Claremont for 13 years, has announced plans to retire after starting a year’s study leave in June.

The unusual end-of-career “sabbatical” was approved, said the seminary’s board chairman, Roy Miller, because Cain “had repeatedly postponed a sabbatical leave because of the demands of running the school.”

Cain, a United Methodist minister who was an intermittent candidate for bishop as late as 1988, will study at Cambridge University in England.

Miller, a Los Angeles attorney, said the Methodist-run seminary with an interdenominational enrollment of 426 students will have a new president named in time for the 1990 fall semester.

The graduate school is the oldest Protestant seminary in Southern California, tracing its roots back to 1880. It was known as the USC School of Religion for 50 years before relocating in Claremont.

Under Cain’s leadership, the school established a master of divinity degree for bilingual Korean students and a new urban ministries program. It has been noted for expertise in the religious philosophy known as process theology, in pastoral counseling studies and in ancient religious manuscripts.

The School of Theology at Claremont will lose the full-time services in June of renowned theologian John Cobb, who is retiring, but school officials announced that Marjorie Suchochi, dean of Wesley Theological Seminary in Washington, will replace him on the faculty. Like Cobb, she has written extensively in process theology.

Trustees are expected to approve on Jan. 27 an endowed chair in Methodist studies in Cain’s name as a part of the seminary’s $7-million endowment fund campaign.

PEOPLE

In a concert indicative of the new face of contemporary Judaism, four women cantors will perform next Saturday at Temple Ramat Zion in Northridge in an 8 p.m. concert of religious, popular and light operatic music. Cantor Linda Rich-Freed of the host temple, who in 1984 was the first woman cantor hired full time by a Conservative synagogue, will be joined by Cantors Rickie Weiner Gole, who served as High Holy Days cantor at Stephen S. Wise Temple; Laurie Rimland of Congregation Beth Shalom in Newhall and Aviva Rosenbloom of Temple Israel in Hollywood. Tickets start at $10 and $15.

MEETINGS

Registration closed this week at 2,700 ministers and church leaders for the 20th Robert Schuller Institute for Successful Church Leadership being held at the Crystal Cathedral in Garden Grove on Wednesday through Sunday. Speakers include Bill Hybels, pastor of the innovative Willow Creek Community Church in Barrington, Ill., and Bishop Charles Blake, pastor of the 6,000-member West Los Angeles Church of God in Christ.

Blake and evangelist Oral Roberts will speak Tuesday and Thursday evenings, respectively, next week as part of nightly celebrations after dedication of the 10,145-seat Faith Dome of Crenshaw Christian Center. The nation’s largest-capacity church, pastored by the Rev. Frederick K Price, was opened last September, but a special dedication rite will be held Sunday at 3 p.m. featuring evangelist Kenneth Hagin of Tulsa, Okla., an influential figure in Price’s ministry.