NEW YORK (RNS) A New York judge has denied a request by a group of parishioners at the landmark Riverside Church to postpone the installation of the church’s new senior pastor because of anger over the minister’s compensation package, reported to be more than $600,000.

Manhattan Supreme Court Judge Lewis Bart Stone on Tuesday (April 21) denied a request that the installation of the Rev. Brad Braxton, planned for Sunday (April 26), be delayed.

Stone said he would not take up the case again until after the members of the congregation hold a May 3 meeting on the issue of the church’s leadership. The judge said different factions of the church need to find “some form of fellowship and reconciliation” in order to avoid what some members say is a serious split among the church’s congregants.

A group of parishioners are angry about Braxton’s $250,000 annual salary, as well as a compensation package that reportedly includes an $11,500 monthly housing allowance and entertainment and travel allowances, the New York Daily News reported Wednesday.

The package is twice the amount given to Braxton’s predecessor, the Rev. James Forbes Jr., who served as senior minister for nearly 20 years, and nearly 10 times the amount paid to the late William Sloane Coffin Jr., the well-known peace activist, during Coffin’s last year as Riverside’s senior minister in 1987, the Daily News reported.

Petitioners said they would not have approved Braxton’s selection as senior minister if they had known the details of his compensation package — described by Daily News columnist Juan Gonzalez as “Wall Street-like.” They argued the details of the salary and benefits package were known only to a small group of church lay leaders.

“Where’s the social justice in this?” Diana Solomon-Glover, one of the petitioners, told Gonzalez.

“We have an economic crisis in the country, and none of the church staff are getting raises this year, but a few people at the top are getting these huge salaries?”

A statement from Billy E. Jones, chairman of the Riverside Church Council, disputed the Daily News report that the compensation package included a “full-time maid,” and said the disputed “private-school tuition” for Braxton’s daughter is actually for Riverside’s own pre-kindergarten program.

“The Rev. Brad Braxton was selected senior minister at the end of a year-long search by a democratic vote of the congregation,” Jones said. “The senior minister’s full compensation package was presented to the congregation on three separate occasions and was voted on, and approved by the congregation in our budget meeting.”

Braxton, a biblical scholar who most recently taught at Vanderbilt University Divinity School, would be the sixth senior minister of the 78-year-old interdenominational church, which has ties with the United Church of Christ and the American Baptist Churches and is considered one of the most prestigious liberal Protestant congregations in the United States.