Chapter 1

Produced by Charles Aldarondo, Tiffany Vergon, Anne Reshnyk and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team

HOME MISSIONS IN ACTION

BY

EDITH H. ALLEN

To

MY FATHER A

Christian Patriot

FROM THE PUBLICATION COMMITTEE

The general topic for the text books for 1915-16, as first chosen by the "Committee of Twenty-eight," was "The Church at Its Task." This committee is composed of representatives from the four missionary organizations: the Home Missions Council; the Council of Women for Home Missions; the Conference of Foreign Mission Boards and the Federation of Women's Boards of Foreign Missions.

The outbreak of the great war of the nations brought new duties and questions of adjustment to the Christian church; the Committee has recognized this in changing the original topic to "The Church and the Nations."

This book is written from the standpoint of the words chosen as the key note for the year, "Thy kingdom come; Thy will be done on earth." It recognizes the fact that the Kingdom cannot come to our land, or to the world unless all social conditions are drawn within its scope; it emphasizes the desire of Home Missions and the church to work toward this great end, and the recognition of their responsibility for its accomplishment. But unless the nations of the world are trending toward the day when peace shall reign and hatred and strife cease among men, these desires cannot be realized. With this in view the portions dealing with social conditions and peace possibilities have been written.

That this book may reveal the far-reaching potentialities of Home Missions as a dynamic force for reclaiming, educating, healing, and integrating our nation into a land over which the Christ shall reign and that from Him it shall also draw its ideals and its power, is the hope and the prayer of the author and the Council of Women for Home Missions.

CONTENTS

I. A NATIONAL FORCE

II. A RECLAIMING FORCE

III. AN EDUCATIVE FORCE

IV. A HEALING FORCE

V. AN INTEGRATING FORCE

VI. SOURCES OF POWER

I

A NATIONAL FORCE PRAYER FOR THE CHURCH

O God, we pray for thy Church, which is set to-day amid the perplexities of a changing order, and face to face with a great new task. We remember with love the nurture she gave to our spiritual life in its infancy, the tasks she set for our growing strength, the influence of the devoted hearts she gathers, the steadfast power for good she has exerted. When we compare her with all other human institutions, we rejoice, for there is none like her. But when we judge her by the mind of her Master, we bow in pity and contrition. Oh, baptize her afresh in the life-giving spirit of Jesus! Grant her a new birth, though it be with the travail of repentance and humiliation. Bestow upon her a more imperious responsiveness to duty, a swifter compassion with suffering, and an utter loyalty to the will of God. Put upon her lips the ancient gospel of her Lord. Help her to proclaim boldly the coming of the Kingdom of God and the doom of all that resist it. Fill her with the prophets' scorn of tyranny, and with a Christ-like tenderness for the heavy-laden and down-trodden. Give her faith to espouse the cause of the people, and in their hands that grope after freedom and light to recognize the bleeding hands of the Christ. Bid her cease from seeking her own life, lest she lose it. Make her valiant to give up her life to humanity, that like her crucified Lord she may mount by the path of the cross to a higher glory.

--Walter Rauschenbusch.

* * * * *

Home Missions may be defined as the out-reaching of the Christian church in America to those peoples and places in our land beyond the immediate environs of the local church.

From the time the Pilgrim, the Dutch, the Cavalier stepped on these shores the church (and included in it Home Missions) has exerted a most powerful influence upon the ideals and standards of life on this continent.

While shaping and moulding the thought and life of the people, it has itself developed a content and vision infinitely greater, more inclusive, more of the spirit of the Christ's "I am come that ye might have life and have it more abundantly," than was dreamed of in the days of its beginning.

"The hidden forces of national life are instinctive and unconscious. One cannot differentiate natural influences so as to ascribe to each its value. The ideals of nations, like those of individuals, are derived from all the concrete qualities of character." [Footnote: F. H. Giddings in "Democracy and Empire."] The ideals which are a compelling force in our nation to-day cannot be ascribed to any one force, but are the result of all those formative reactions which are the product of racial, economic, social, ethical and religious forces, the latter being pre-eminently the most marked.

It will be remembered that into the new and harder life of the successive frontiers, Home Missions entered, bringing a saving power, as well as one that softened and glorified the renunciations and sacrifices attendant always upon frontier life.

Indeed, the most marked characteristics of our national life until recent years have been those born of contact with frontier conditions--courage, discipline, an austere sense of duty, a passion for work, marvelous practicality joined to a fundamental idealism and love of sentiment, an unconquerable hopefulness and an innate kindness and personal helpfulness.

Of necessity the conditions and environs of the country have reacted upon the religious ideals and life of our people. We can not enter into the fullest understanding of the present place and influence of Home Missions as a National Force, or a study of its immediate future, without pausing to review the background of the past. For we recognize that growth, organization and development are all functions of _time_.

The early fathers had no thought of founding a nation when they sought refuge and a new start on this continent. Jamestown, New York, Plymouth and their outgrowing settlements were intensely individualistic. They were the individual Cavalier, Hollander or Pilgrim, only in larger proportions, bearing all their characteristics.

To appreciate the characteristics and spirit of these colonists, we must consider the special significance of the age that gave them birth. They "were the children of a century in which the human spirit had a new birth in energy of imagination, in faith in its powers to dare greatly and achieve greatly." [Footnote: Hamilton Wright Mabie--American Ideals, Character and Life.]

They were inspired most strongly by religious aspirations, although combining with these impelling political convictions. In the Puritan colony, "membership in the church for some time remained a qualification for voting."

"In nearly every document which conveyed authority to discoverers, explorers, and settlers in the New World, the Christian religion was recognized." [Footnote: Hamilton Wright Mabie--American Ideals, Character and Life.]

Their faith was of heroic quality, of rock firmness; their obedience to duty as they saw it, almost absolute.

The Bible exerted a tremendous influence. It was not only their religious guide and teacher, but was also their library, daily companion and for some time their only literature. It became wrought into the very fibre of their thought.

This dominating religious attitude, while modified in the different types--the Friends, Huguenots, Moravians--gave the impulses which have had so strong a formative influence upon the life of the nation.

Recognizing fully the incalculable value of this early religious contribution, we cannot fail also to realize the limitations of the religious outlook of that period, and the effect of these limitations upon the social life of the country. Seventeenth century religion laid its emphasis upon the subjective--upon definitions of religious belief--and found expression in theological discussion and opinion. It concerned itself intensely with the individual as regards his spiritual life, but took little or no account of the outward conditions that bear so powerfully upon the inner life. Thus in its growth the church failed to exercise that commanding influence in the redemption of society and the _forming_ of social conditions which should have accompanied the preaching of individual salvation.

It entered deeply, reverently, passionately into the spirit of the first commandment: "Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart and with all thy soul and with all thy might," but failed in holding with equal grasp the second, "Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself."

Had the church, had Home Missions, entered fully into the spirit of this second commandment, its enormous restraining, organizing, saving power would have contributed more fully to the _forming_ of the community life before it so desperately needed _re_forming--to dealing with those great fundamental conditions which have led to the "submerged" of our civilization.

To-day we are coming to recognize the vital connection between spiritual regeneration and the bringing of the Kingdom of God on Earth. Home Missions is essentially and radically concerned with both. Rev. David Watson in his "Social Advance" says:

"Theology and sociology are closely kin and in a sense complementary. Theology deals with man's relation to God, Sociology with man's relation to his fellows. The one is the science of God, the other is the science of society.

"The goal of all real social advance, as of all Home Mission effort, should be the establishment of the Kingdom of God on earth in all its gracious fullness; and the method fourfold, by spiritual dynamics (the church and its Home Missions), moral culture, economic change and wise legislation."

First, the Gospel, with its message of individual salvation, and the Kingdom of God, this opening the way for and bringing with it education and moral culture, and the control of economic forces by legislation.

"Only through the unified action of all these forces is continued progress assured."

The church has eagerly sought to comply with the first three requisites, but its failure to recognize the specific influence it might exert along the lines of the economic and legislative have retarded mightily the better day in this land and hindered the best and highest attainment of our democracy.

The concept of the Christian ideal to-day is that it shall save the individual, but also remove that which produces crime and makes sin almost inevitable--in short, that it shall seek to redeem the environment as well as the sinner, and give more wholesomeness, more fullness, more joy to life through redeeming its conditions, as well as saving its soul.

On the church and its outreaching Home Missions as the instrument for the Kingdom-progress, rests a heavy responsibility in supplying that spiritual dynamic and inspiration which is back of all social upbuilding. It must produce the men and women whose characters are such that in their attitude toward industry, labor, legislation, in all their social capacities, they will seek to live Christ's social principle, "What ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them," and to bring the Master's Beatitudes as a working principle into life.

Before considering what we have left undone, let us review in outline the splendid record of Home Missions.

Since the early days when Roger Williams pressed into the wilderness of Rhode Island, the Christian preacher and teacher have followed the advancing line of the successive frontiers--no hardship, no denial, no scarcity of food, no privation, no want or cold so great that Home Missions hesitated to go, with its spiritual healing, its community service, bringing the very heart of Christ's love and service into these new centers. When adventurous home-seekers reached the Alleghanies, the Iowa Band soon followed. When the fate of the great Northwest hung in the balance, a missionary statesman came to its saving.

When the frozen North called men with its lure of gold, an indomitable missionary led in all that made for the better life. When a devastating war had spent its fury and a helpless Africa, bound by heaviest chains of ignorance and superstition, waited, Home Missions responded.

When the deposed Red brother suffered every form of grievous wrong, Home Missions brought him brotherly love and helped him find the Jesus Road. When the alien stood bewildered in our midst, Home Missions gave him guidance. When the dumb appeal of the isolated mountaineers was realized, Home Missions followed the lonely mountain trail. To the mines and the lumber camps, to the ancient Spanish folk of our continent, to those deluded by the false Prophet--to all of these Home Missions has carried its threefold ministry of saving, teaching and training.

Home Missions counts its lives laid down for the Christ on a hundred fields. No pen can tell of the magnitude of its influence on our national life. Its little enterprises are now the great, strong city churches of Nebraska, Kansas, California, Oregon, in fact of all the States.

It was a Congregational pastor, Rev. Jeremiah Porter, who preached the first sermon on Lake Michigan, as he held a service in the carpenter shop of Fort Dearborn in 1833. The population of what afterward became the city of Chicago then numbered three hundred. As a result of the efforts of Rev. Mr. Porter, who organized the first Presbyterian church in the city of Chicago while working also for the Congregational church, many of the present centers of Christian influence were instituted in that city.

It is instructive to note the returns from one Home Mission enterprise. On the Pacific coast the Congregational Home Missionary Society in sixty-two years spent $1,646,000. In thirty-two years the churches thus founded sent $864,000 to carry Christ's message to foreign countries, and $302,000 through other Congregational agencies for uplift in this country. This was given in addition to all the local philanthropies and social service rendered in their own communities by these organizations.

The history of the first Presbyterian Church of Portland, Oregon, is one of the outstanding illustrations of the fruitfulness of Home Mission work. "This church was organized on January first, 1854, with ten members. It was a strictly Home Mission work, dependent upon the Home Board for its existence. When it was reorganized in 1860 it had but seventeen members, and they were unable to pay the salary.

"During the next four years it received aid from the Board of Home Missions to the amount of eleven hundred dollars. Then it undertook self-support. It has been blessed in having a line of far-seeing pastors who have led it on from strength to strength.

"As its members increased in wealth they grew in their interest in the advancement of the Kingdom of God. Every enterprise which helped on that Kingdom was either begun or promoted by the First Church. The first missionary to Alaska went out from it, and her expenses were paid for six months from the treasury of the First Church.

"The steady development of the Oregon Territory engaged the eager interest of this church from the first. It is said that in all that district, including Oregon, Washington and part of Idaho, no Presbyterian church was ever erected which did not receive some aid from the members of the First Church of Portland.

"In a single year of its history it has contributed twenty thousand dollars to Home Missions, and it is because of the large share in the Home Mission work of the Presbytery of Portland taken by the First Church that that Presbytery was able to assume self-support, and so become the first self-supporting Presbytery in the great Northwest.

"This church also fostered the educational interests of the Northwest. Albany College in Oregon owes its existence in large measure to its generosity. Portland Academy was early taken over by its members, and to-day is equal to any secondary school in the country. The San Francisco Theological Seminary came into a full share of aid and care. The Ladd professorship is a lasting proof of the spirit of that church.

"The increasing numbers of Chinese attracted the attention of the church, and the first mission to the Chinese by the Presbyterian Church was established in 1885 on petition of the pastor of the First Church.

"Its foreign mission work has been extensive. Not only has it sent out its own members to the foreign mission field, but it has been from the very beginning a liberal supporter of Foreign Missions. The first Foreign Mission Society of Oregon was organized in this church, and the splendid North Pacific Board of Missions, broad enough minded to see the whole task of the church, was organized here, and is to-day an eager supporter of Home, Foreign and Freedmen's missions.

"Nor has the church been unmindful of its debt to this ever-growing city of Portland." [Footnote: Rev. Charles L. Thompson, D.D.]

Illustrations of similar service might be multiplied many times from the history of other denominations.

With all this glorious, Christ-filled service, Home Missions has ministered to only a small part. Over sixty millions of the nearly one hundred of our population are non-Christian and allied with no religious organizations whatever--Catholic, Hebrew, or Protestant.

Still more than forty thousand Indians in this country are without Christian ministry. Still great districts in our Southern mountains wait the coming of opportunity and uplift. Still large numbers of Mexicans in the Southwest, ignorant and superstitious, are a retarding element in their communities. Still vast immigrant settlements remain untouched by regenerating influences and absorb, as well as contribute, much that is deteriorating.

Still the traitorous hierarchy, Mormonism, makes enormous strides almost unchecked by Christian effort. The Mormon Church officially makes the following report of its mission work in this country and abroad in one year: Tracts distributed, 10,892,122; gospel conversations, 1,744,641; families visited, 3,532,273; books distributed and standard church works, 500,614; meetings held, 92,072.

Still from our cities comes the bitter cry of the submerged and of the women and girls whom unspeakable sin is claiming. "The United States has the largest proportion of women workers to the population in the world (one in five). [Footnote: Henry C. Vedder--The Gospel of Jesus and the Problem of Democracy.] It has done less toward the regulation of this form of labor--less for the protection of its women laborers--than any other country."

The recent investigations in Chicago and other large cities show the close relation between insufficient wages and vice.

One of the greatest obstacles to the relief of these conditions is the indifference of well-to-do people who do not come into personal contact with the wrongs and sufferings of the working people.

Still we are confronted by the sad spectacle of more than a million of the nation's children at work in factories and cotton mills for their living, and helping to support their families.

"The child is the embodied future. We can never have good citizenship without protected childhood. Child labor is a process of squandering future wealth to satisfy present need." [Footnote: See report of Eleventh Conference of Child Labor held at Washington, January, 1915.]

Defrauded childhood! Children, loaded with heavy tasks beyond their strength, robbed of the light and joy of life, plead for childhood's rights and that spiritual development that should make known to them the companionship of the Saviour and the love of the Heavenly Father.

The testimony printed in the fall of 1912, concerning child labor in the canning factories of the Empire State, shows that more than a thousand children were employed in the canning industry that summer; one hundred and forty-one were less than ten years old.

An experienced manufacturer has said, "You can protect a machine, you can guide the buzz-saw, but no law that you can enact can, in a large industry, protect the heart and soul of the child."

A marked improvement has been made in the last five years in combating the evils of child labor. Many states forbid the employment of children under fourteen years of age in factories and mills--but in North and South Carolina, in Georgia and Alabama, children under fourteen are still permitted to labor in factories ten or twelve hours a day.

To reach this evil from the Federal standpoint, the powers of the Inter-State Commerce Commission should be invoked.

A bill is now pending (February, 1915) before Congress to bar from interstate commerce the products of mills, mines, quarries, factories and workshops employing child labor.

Home Missions must also face to-day the infinitely complex and rapidly increasing problem involved in the adjustment of our population to cities and away from rural districts. Thus cities are becoming dominant factors to be reckoned with in all the elements that enter into the question of religious and moral uplift, as well as the ideals and the welfare of our nation.

Here the aggregation of immigrants focuses acutely the complex problems peculiar to them.

Here is the child laborer in factories and on the streets.

Here women and girls struggle under fearful economic pressure.

Here is the political boss--and what ex-President Roosevelt terms "organized alliance between the criminal rich and the criminal poor."

Here is the class consciousness and hatred--the cry of anarchy and socialism.

"To-day seventy-six per cent of the population of Massachusetts live in cities; of New York, eighty-five and one-half per cent; New Jersey, sixty-one and two-tenths; Connecticut, fifty-three and two-tenths; Illinois is one-half urban, and forty per cent of California's people live under city conditions." [Footnote: Frederic C. Howe--The City, the Hope of Democracy.]

Contrasted with this peculiar burden of the city, there is the country church and the adaptation needed to maintain it in any degree of effectiveness, when its very life blood has been drained for the city. It has made untold contributions of ministers, missionaries, church officers and members to the cities and distant fields, leaving the mother church childless and weak in its advancing years.

Changes that leave almost none of its former constituency confront the country church.

Old farms and village stores pass into the hands of aliens--in many instances Hebrews--summer boarders claim the attention of the faithful women of the congregation for the most favorable months of the year. Sunday sports engage the interests of the indifferent, and there are many other disintegrating elements.

In a land where progress calls to progress, where the results of hasty development create a large share of its problem--a land where the need of Christian effort is paramount, and where such effort is so vital to the world, the decadence of the country church is of far-reaching significance. Home Missions is called to direct its energizing, constructive ability to the solution of this baffling and discouraging feature of its problem to a greater degree than ever before.

Home Missions at this time also confronts a new opportunity and obligation--to make its voice heard, its influence felt, for international peace.

These winter days of 1914, in which the world has apparently lost its soul in the fury of slaughter, speak very loudly to the heart of Christianity.

No force for the upbuilding of the Christ power on earth can ignore the significance and solemnity of this time.