Chapter 14

In country communities this principle explains the divisions and the unities of religious life. In many towns, the Presbyterian church, for instance, is the church of the old settler and the earlier farmers. A new denomination has come in with the tenants and the invaders. That is, men have found it impossible to worship in a constant experience of difference. It is true that their difference is an element in their religion, because the consciousness of difference is an element in the consciousness of kind.

In the Southern States, the white slave-holders worshiped, before the war, in the same congregations with their negro slaves. They were conscious of the plantation group, and of the economic unity with their work-people. When emancipation came and the slaves were made free, they must needs worship apart; and today, throughout the whole South, the negro churches have been erected to express the consciousness of kind, both on the part of the white and of the black.

If this argument has force, it goes to prove that religion is, in a small community, the strongest organizing force. The seeking after God requires as a vehicle the consciousness of likeness and difference. It can only proceed along those lines.

The earnest desire of many common folk to know God is a working force, which follows the cleavage of social classification. The churches become expressions of social forms. In the country particularly, where life is simpler and changes are slower, the church becomes an almost infallible index of the social condition of the people.

The duty, then, of the religious worker, and the task of the prophet and the seer, is to enlarge the consciousness of kind. Worship is to be placed on a larger plane. Americans must be taught to see their unity with immigrants. Owners of land must be made to recognize that they are one with their tenants. The employer must be shown that his alliances are with those who help him to get his living. At once, when this task is put before us, we see the futility of the ideals of our time. Church workers and other teachers have played up before the eyes of the people those ideals which separate men into artificial classes. The consciousness of kind has been a consciousness of money and consciousness of belonging to old families, or a consciousness of the ideals of higher education. A great many American families live in the ideal of sending their boys and girls to college. This leads them to feel a difference between themselves and the larger number of people who do not care for higher education, and who discover no energies in themselves that move on the path of learning. The result is that their worship is narrow; churches become culture clubs: the preachers are exponents of literature: the service of worship is a liturgy of esthetic pleasure.

The true consciousness of kind must be economic and social. There is no escape from this for religious people. They must go deep down to the unities with men who co-operate with them in getting a living. The Pittsburgh mill owner has no other unity by which he can find himself at one with his foreign born mill-hand, than the fact that he and the mill-hand are fellow workers in the mill.

What other bond of union is there between the farm landlord and the farm tenant? They have no common idealism. The one reads books, the other does not. The one sends his son to college, the other sends his into the stable and the field. The one is enjoying a life of leisure and his hands are clean; the other sweats, saves, and produces, in soiled clothing, and with hard, coarse hands. They have only one basis of unity, namely, that they co-operate in tilling the soil, and in the producing of food and raw materials. The teacher, or preacher, who attempts in this case to escape the economic unity, will find no other.

The trouble with most of the ideals which express themselves in diversified worship, is that they are peculiar to the life of leisure, they are a part of "the leisure class standard." Many teachers and preachers reiterate similar demands which can only be responded to by people who do not have to work.

From this leisure class standard our ideals must be changed to the standard of work, and the man who has vision is he who shall see the economic, the industrial unities, and who with compelling voice, will call men together to worship in a new consciousness of kind.

Ministers in the country are feeling this very deeply. The pastor who ministers to a whole community, boasts of it. He realizes he is serving a true social unit. This is the joy of many country churches which might be named, and the lack of it is the blight of many other country communities. It must be clearly born in mind, however, that the church can not organize a unity that is apart from the life of men. Religion is the expression of social realities. There can be no "federation" of those who are not conscious of their likeness and of their resemblances. This means that the religious teaching of days to come must be a teaching of the real unities of mankind. For in these true bonds of union men are brought together. The efforts to assemble them in artificial bonds, however ideal, will be futile.

FOOTNOTE:

[Footnote 35: "Descriptive and Historical Sociology," by Prof. Franklin H. Giddings, p. 275.]

SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY

BOOKS

The Conservation of Natural Resources in the United States, Chas. R. Van Hise, The Macmillan Co.

The Rural Life Problem of the United States, Sir Horace Plunkett, The Macmillan Co.

Principles of Rural Economics, Thomas Nixon Carver, Ginn and Company

The Country Life Movement in the United States, L. H. Bailey, The Macmillan Co.

Ireland in the New Century, Sir Horace Plunkett, E. P. Dutton

The American Rural School, Harold W. Foght, The Macmillan Co.

The Country Town. A Study of Rural Evolution, Wilbert L. Anderson, The Baker & Taylor Co.

Descriptive and Historical Sociology, Franklin H. Giddings, The Macmillan Co.

Rural Denmark and Its Lessons, H. Rider Haggard, Longmans, Green & Co.

Quaker Hill, A Sociological Study, Warren H. Wilson, Privately printed

Youth, G. Stanley Hall, D. Appleton & Co.

The Presbyterian Church in the United States, Robert E. Thompson, Chas. Scribner's Sons

Chapters in Rural Progress, Kenyon L. Butterfield, The University of Chicago Press

The Country Church and the Rural Problem, Kenyon L. Butterfield, The University of Chicago Press

The Story of John Frederick Oberlin, Augustus Field Beard, The Pilgrim Press

The Church of the Open Country, Warren H. Wilson, Missionary Education Movement

The Day of the Country Church, J. O. Ashenhurst, Funk & Wagnalls Co.

The Distribution of Wealth, John Bates Clark, The MacMillan Co.

ARTICLES REFERRED TO IN THE TEXT

The American Journal of Sociology, March, 1911, Statement by John L. Gillin.

The American Journal of Sociology, March, 1911, The Drift of the City in Relation to the Rural Problem, John M. Gillette.

Modern Methods in the Country Church, Matthew B. McNutt, Missionary Education Movement

A Method of Making a Social Survey in a Rural Community, C. J. Galpin, University of Wisconsin Circular of information No. 29

Bulletins of International Institute of Agriculture, Rome, Italy

The Political Science Quarterly, December, 1910, The Agrarian Changes in the middle West, J. B. Ross

INDEX

Abandoned country churches, 126

Absentee landlords, 32-39

Academy,--Old New England, 25

Addams, Jane, 191

Adult Bible Class, 134

Agee, Prof. Alva, 105

Agriculture, teaching of, 167

Amish, 74

Amusement, problem of, 84

Anabaptist, 72

Anderson, Wilbert L., 102

Anti-Saloon League, 183

Apples, marketing of, 175

Augustine, Saint, 82

Austerity, 57

Bailey, L. H., 50

"Bees", 203

Bellona, N. Y. 56

Boll weevil, 143

Bone, R. E., 86

Braddock, Rev. J. S., 58

Breach of contract, 174

Breadwinner, type, 113

Butterfield, Kenyon L., 137

Casselton, N. D., 42

Centralized school, 163

Chaffee, farm, 43

Chester County, Pa., 124

Chesterton, Gilbert K., 115

Christmas play, 203

Church, Budget, 138 Envelope system, 139 Financial system, 130 Records, 172

Clark, John Bates, 80, 111

College athletics, 193

Columbus, Christopher, 112

Community center, 104

Consciousness of kind, 208, 213

Corn Clubs, 206

Country Fair, promoted, 17

Country Life Commission, 171

Cranberry, N. J., church at, 27

Crete, Nebraska, 86

Danish Folk Schools, 52, 169

Delaware, produce exchanges, 154

Demonstration work, 206

Denmark, 51, 147

Desmoulin, 96

Diminishing returns, law of, 88, 110

Donation, system, 27

Dunkers, 58, 67

Du Page Church, 106

Eliot, Ex-President of Harvard, 137

Endowment of churches, 136

Exploitation of land, 32-33, 123, 124

Family group, 19 Shrinkage of, 124

Farm laborers, 22

Federation of churches, 135, 209

Foght, Harold W., 97, 160

Fourth of July celebration, 205

Galesburg, Ill., 201

Galpin, Prof. C. J., 94

Giddings, Prof. Franklin H., 208

Gill, Rev. C. O., 195

Gillette, Prof. John M., 188

Gillin, Prof., 57, 58, 67

Greeley, Horace, 108

Group system, 10, 11, 12

Grundtvig, Bishop, 51, 53, 169

Gulick, Dr. Luther H., 197

Haggard, H. Rider, 147

Hanover, N. J., 156

Hays, Willet M., 91

Hernando, Mississippi, 105

Holidays, celebration of, 204

Homestead act, 34

Hood River Valley, Oregon, fruit growers, 176

Hormell, Dr. W. H., 88

Illinois, 126 Survey of, 190

Immigrants, in country districts, 123

Indiana, survey of, 190

Ireland, Christian Brothers, 52 Co-operative organizations, 147-151 Country Life Movement, 80

John Swaney Consolidated School, 165-166

Kentucky, co-operative organizations, 152 Survey of, 190

Lancaster County, Pa., 57

Land values, 34

Leadership, 187

Lewistown, Pa., 198

McNab, Ill., 166

McNutt, Rev. Matthew B., 86, 106

Marginal man, 113

Massachusetts communities, 96

Mennonites, 72

Middle Creek Church, 58

Minimum salary, 161

Missouri, survey of, 190

Money crop, 95

Mormons, 57, 62-78

Morrison, Rev. T. Maxwell, 56

Mountain community, 4

Mountaineers, 6, 8, 16

New England Country Church Asso., 137

New York Central R. R., 177

Oberammergau, 83

Oberlin, John Frederick, 14

Oblong meeting, 71, 172

Ohio, counties less productive, 101

Ottumwa, Iowa, 88

Over churching, 26, 145, 146

Palatinates, 72

Pastor, need of, 13

Passion Play, 83

Penn, William, 72

Penn Yan, N. Y., 40

Pennsylvania Germans, 57, 62-78

Pennsylvania, survey of, 190

Planters, south, 18

Playground, 98

Playground movement, 134, 196

Plunkett, Sir Horace, 51, 147

Polk, Rev. Samuel, 54

Poor, ministry to, 115

Protestantism, 118

Quaker Hill, 70, 94, 155

Quaker meeting, McNab, 168

Quakers, 70, 197, 204

Rankin, David, 41

Recreation, importance of, 139, 194

Retired farmers, 36-38

Retirement from farm, process described, 125

Revivals, 7, 8, 9

Riis, Jacob, 87

Rock Creek, Ill., 156, 164, 205

Ross, Prof. J. B., 2, 21, 29, 32, 184

Rural evangelism, 131

Rural exodus, 87, 97

Rural free delivery, 128

Sag Harbor, L. I., 201

Sage, Mrs. Russell, 201

Schenck, Norman C., 4

School, country, 23, 85, 60, 159

Scientific farming, 48

Scotch-Irish, 30, 57, 62-78

Simmel, 212

Slave-holding churches, 28

Smith, Adam, 5

Smith, John, 112

Socialism, 116

Social service, 110, XVI

Spencer, Herbert, 212

Store, country, 22, 94

Sunday Schools, 131, 134

Swaney, John, 86

Tardé, Gabriel, 59

Teachers, training of, 161

Team play, ethical value, 99

Telephone, rural, 128, 190

Temperance movement, 46, 117, 183

Tenant farmers, 35 Tenants' lease, 40

Thompson, R. E., 65

Theological seminaries, 119-120

Trolley, inter-urban, 128

Types, economic, 3

Utility, initial, 108 Marginal, 109

Van Alstyne, Edward, 177

Vote selling, 179

Washington County, Pa., 124

Waterloo, Iowa, community church, 68

Wealth, conservation of, 47

West Nottingham, Md., church at, 54

Winnebago, Ill., 58

Young Men's Christian Association, 134, 194

Young People's Societies, 28

* * * * *

Transcriber's note

The following changes have been made to the text:

Page xi: "IX" changed to "XIII".

Page 2: "are separated form" changed to "are separated from".

Page 6: "langour" changed to "languor".

Page 17: "this be brought" changed to "this he brought".

Page 22: "desti-period" changed to "destination".

Page 29: "estended" changed to "extended".

Page 30: "recorded in out literature" changed to "recorded in our literature".

Page 86: "individiuals" changed to "individuals".

Page 94: "In 1910 every country community" changed to "In 1810 every country community".

Page 105: "embarassed" changed to "embarrassed".

Page 107: Footnote 24: "Willett" changed to "Willet"

Page 116: "proletarean" changed to "proletarian".

Page 123: "Portugese" changed to "Portuguese".

Page 150: "gradiloquently" changed to "grandiloquently".

Page 191: "Addam" changed to "Addams".

Page 192: "elf-expression takes the form" changed to "self-expression takes the form".

Page 197: "inmoral" changed to "immoral".

Page 198: "disintered" changed to "disinterred".

Page 206: "frutiful" changed to "fruitful".

Page 208: "expresssion" changed to "expression".

Page 209: "immaturity of our ecnomic" changed to "immaturity of our economic".

Page 220: "Lewiston" changed to "Lewistown".

Page 221: "XII" changed to "XVI".

Page 221: "Tard" changed to "Tardé".