Society: Its Origin and Development Part 12

THE RURAL CHURCH

162. =The Value of the Rural Church.=--Of all the local inst.i.tutions of the rural community, none is so discouraging and at the same time so potential for usefulness as the country church. It has had a n.o.ble past; it is pa.s.sing through a dubious present; it should emerge into a great future. The church is the conserver of the highest ideals. Like every long-established inst.i.tution, it is conservative in methods as well as in principles. It regards itself as the censor of conduct and the mentor of conscience, and it fills the role of critic as often as it holds out an encouraging hand to the weary and hard pressed in the struggle for existence and moral victory. It is the guide-post to another world, which it esteems more highly than this. Sometimes it puts more emphasis on creed than on conduct, on Sunday scrupulousness than on Monday scruple. But in spite of its failings and its frequent local decline, the church is the hope of rural America. It is notorious that the absence of a church means a distinctly lower type of community life, both morally and socially. Vice and crime flourish there. Property values tumble when the church dies and the minister moves away. Many residents rarely if ever enter the precincts of the meeting-house or contribute to the expense of its maintenance, yet they share in the benefits that it gives and would not willingly see it disappear when they realize the consequences. In the westward march of settlement the missionary kept pace with the pioneer, and the church on the frontier became the centre of every good influence. It is impossible to estimate the value of the rural church in the onrush of civilization. Religion has been the saving salt of humanity when it was in danger of spoiling. In the lumber and the mining camp, on the cattle-ranch and the prairie, the missionary has sweetened life with his ministry and given a tone to the life of the open and the wild that in value is past calculation.

163. =The Church in Decline.=--In the days when it seems declining, the strength of the rural church is worth preserving. There are hundreds of rural communities where the young people have gone to the town and population has steadily fallen behind. There are hundreds more where the people of a community have drawn wealth from the soil, and with a succession of good crops and high prices have acc.u.mulated enough to keep them comfortable, and then have sold or leased their property and moved into town. The purchasers or tenants who replaced them have been less able to contribute to church support or have been of a different faith or race, and the churches have found it difficult to survive. Doubtless some of these churches could be spared without great loss, for in the rush of real or expected settlement, certain localities became over-churched, but the spectacle of scores of abandoned churches in the Middle West has as doleful an appearance as abandoned farms in New England.

164. =Is It Worth Preserving?=--It would be a misfortune for the church to perish out of the rural districts, for it performs a religious function that no other inst.i.tution performs. It cherishes the beliefs that have strengthened man through the ages and given him the upward look that betokens faith in his destiny and power in his life. It calls out the best that is in him to meet the tasks of every day. It ministers to him in times of greatest need. It teaches him how to relate himself to an Unseen Power and to the fellowship of human kind. The meeting-house is a community centre drawing to itself like a magnet family groups and individuals from miles around, overcoming their isolation and breaking into the daily monotony of their lives, and with its worship and its sermon awakening new thoughts and impulses for the enrichment of life. Nor does its ministry confine itself to things of the spirit. The weekly Sunday a.s.sembly provides opportunity for social intercourse, if no more than an exchange of greetings, and now and then a sociable evening gathering or anniversary occasion brings an added social opportunity.

165. =The Country Minister.=--The faithful rural minister also carries the church to the people. His parish is broad, but he finds his way into the homes of his parishioners, acquaints himself with their characteristics and their needs, and fits his ministrations to them.

Especially does he carry comfort to the sick and soothe the suffering and the dying. No other can quite fill his place; no other so builds himself into the hearts of the people. He may not be a great thinker or preach polished sermons; his hands may be rough and his clothes ill-fitting; but if he is a loyal friend and ministers to real spiritual need, he is saint and prophet to those whom he has brothered.

In the rural economy each public functionary is worthy or unworthy, according to his personal fidelity to his particular task. A poorly equipped board of government is not worth half the salary of the school-teacher. That official may not hold his place or gain the respect of his pupils unless he meets their needs of instruction with a degree of efficiency. But a public servant who fills full the channels of his usefulness is worth twice what he is likely to get as his stipulated wage. The community can well afford to look kindly upon a minister of that type, to encourage him in his efforts for the upbuilding of the community, and to contribute to an honorable stipend for his support.

166. =The Problems.=--The rural church has its problems and so has the rural minister. There are the indifferent people who are irreligious themselves and have no share in the activities of the religious inst.i.tution. There are the insincere people who belong to the church but are not sympathetic in spirit or conduct. There are the cold-blooded people who gather weekly in the meeting-house but do not respond to intellectual or spiritual stimulus, and who chill the heart of the minister and soon quench his enthusiasm. It is not surprising if he is restless and changes location frequently, or if he becomes listless and apparently indifferent to the welfare of his flock, when he meets no response and himself enjoys no stimulus from his own kind.

All these conditions const.i.tute the spiritual problem. Beyond this there is the inst.i.tutional problem. The church finds maintenance difficult, often impossible without outside a.s.sistance. Failing to minister to any purely community need except on special occasions, or to a.s.sume any responsibility of leadership in civic or social affairs, it does not receive the cordial support of the community to which as a social inst.i.tution, conserving the highest interests, it is reasonably ent.i.tled. It must be remembered that in America there can be no established church supported by the State, as in England. The church is on a different footing in every community from that of the public school. It is therefore dependent on the good-will of the community and must cultivate that good-will if it is to succeed. Most rural churches have yet to become a vital force, not only energizing their own members, but reaching out also to the whole community, seeking not their own growth as their chief end, but by ministering to the community's needs, realizing a fuller, richer life of their own.

167. =The Needs of the Church.=--The rural church needs reorganization for efficiency, but changes must be gradual. A local church that is democratic in its form of organization, with no external oversight, is likely to need strengthening in administration; a church that intrusts control to a small board or is governed from the outside probably needs to get closer to the people, but differences in church government are of small practical consequence. It does not appear that it makes much difference in the success of a rural church whether its organization is Episcopal, Presbyterian, or Congregational. The machinery needs modernizing, whatever the pattern. It is a part of the task to be undertaken by every up-to-date country minister to consider possible improvements in the various departments of the church. It is as likely that the children are being as inefficiently taught in the Sunday-school as in the every-day school, that organizations and opportunities for the young people are as lacking as in the community at large, that discussions in the Bible cla.s.s are as pointless as those in any local forum. It is more than likely that the church is failing to make good in a given locality because it is depending on a few persons to carry on its activities, and these few do not co-operate well with one another or with other Christian people. The functions of the church are neither well understood nor properly performed. It has small a.s.sets in community good-will, and it is in no real sense a going concern.

168. =The New Rural Church.=--Here and there a church of a new type is meeting manfully these various needs. It has set itself first to answer the question whether the church is a real religious force in the community, and what method may best be used to energize the countryside more effectually for moral and religious ends. Old forms or times of worship have needed changing, or an innovating individual has taken a hand temporarily. Then it has faced the practical problem of religious education. Most churches maintain a Sunday-school and a Woman's Missionary or Aid Society. Certain of them have young people's organizations, and a few have organized men's cla.s.ses or clubs. Each of these groups goes on its own independent course. There is no attempt to correlate the studies with which each concerns itself, and there is much waste of effort in holding group sessions that accomplish nothing. The new church directors simplify, correlate, and systematize all the educational work that is being attempted, improve courses of study and methods of teaching, and propose to all concerned the attainment of certain definite standards. In the third place, the new rural church adopts for itself a well-considered programme of community service. Its opportunity is unlimited, but its efforts are not worth much unless it approaches the subject intelligently, with a knowledge of local conditions, of its own resources, and of the methods that have been used successfully in other similar localities.

Nothing less than these three tasks of investigation, education, and service belong to every church; toward this ideal is moving an increasing number of churches in the country.

READING REFERENCES

b.u.t.tERFIELD: _The Country Church and the Rural Problem._

FISKE: _The Challenge of the Country._

WILSON: _The Church of the Open Country._

NESMITH: Chapter on "The Rural Church" in _Social Ministry._

HART: _Educational Resources of Village and Rural Communities_, pages 176-196.

_Report of Country Life Commission_, 1908.

CHAPTER XXIV

A NEW TYPE OF RURAL INSt.i.tUTION

169. =A New Type of Inst.i.tution.=--The rural community everywhere is in need of a new social inst.i.tution. Those which exist have been individualistic in purpose and method and only incidentally have been socially constructive. The school has existed to make individuals efficient intellectually, that they might be able to struggle successfully for existence. The church has existed as a means to individual salvation from future ill. Social good has resulted from these inst.i.tutions, but it has not been fundamental in their purpose.

The new rural inst.i.tution that is needed is a centre for community reconstruction. If the school or the church can adapt itself to the need, either may become such an inst.i.tution; if not, there must be a new type.

It has often been said that the characteristic evil of rural life is the isolation of the people, but this must be understood to mean not merely an isolated location of farm dwellings but a lack of human fellowship. In the city the majority of people might as well live in isolated houses as far as acquaintance with neighbors is concerned, but they do not lack human fellowship because they have group connections elsewhere. In the country it is hardly possible to choose a.s.sociates or inst.i.tutional connections. There is one school prepared to receive the children of a certain age, and no other, unless they are conveyed to a distance at great inconvenience; the variety of suitable churches is not large. It is necessary to cultivate neighbors or to go without friendships. But rural social relations are not well lubricated. There are few common topics of conversation, except the weather, the crops, or a bit of gossip. There are few common interests about which discussion may centre. There is need of an inst.i.tution that shall create and conserve such common interests.

170. =A Community House.=--The first task is to bring people together to a common gathering place, where perfect democracy will prevail, and where there may be unrestricted discussion. There is no objection to using the schoolhouse for the purpose, but ordinarily it is not adapted to the purposes of an a.s.sembly-room. The meeting-house may serve the purpose, but to many persons it seems a desecration of a sacred building, and except in the case of a single community church there is too much of the denominational flavor about it to make it an unrestricted forum. Ideally there should be a community house erected at a convenient location, and large enough to accommodate as many as might desire to a.s.semble. It should be equipped for all the social uses to which it might be put. It should be paid for by the voluntary contributions of all the people, but t.i.tle to the property should be in the hands of a board of trustees or a.s.sociates who would be responsible for its maintenance and for the uses to which it would be put. These persons must be men and women of the town in whose judgment the people have full confidence. Regular expenses should be met by annual payments, as the Young Men's Christian a.s.sociation is sustained in cities all over the country, and by occasional entertainments. A limited endowment fund would be helpful, but too large endowment tends to pauperize a local inst.i.tution.

171. =Intellectual Stimulus.=--The second task is to put the community house to use. There are numerous ways by which this can be done, but the best are those that fit local need. Of all the needs the greatest is stimulus to thought. Ideally this should come from the pulpit of the rural church, but its stimulus is usually not strong, it is commonly confined to religious exhortation, and it reaches only a few.

All the people of the community need to think seriously about their economic and social interests, and to be drawn out to express themselves on such subjects. The old-fashioned town meeting provided a channel for such discussion once a year. What is needed is a town-meeting extension through eight or nine months of the year. The community house offers an opportunity for such an extension. Under the initiative and guidance of one or two energetic local leaders, inspired by an occasional outside lecturer, such as can be obtained at small expense from agricultural colleges and other public agencies, almost any American community ought to carry on a forum of public discussion for weeks, taking up first the most urgent questions of community interest and pa.s.sing on gradually to matters of broader concern.

172. =Social Satisfaction.=--As the adults of the community need intellectual stimulus, so the young people need social satisfactions.

The salvation of the American rural community lies largely in the contentment of the young people, for without that quality of mind they leave the country for the town, or settle back in an unprogressive, unsocial state of sullen resignation. There must be opportunity for recreation. The community house should function for the entertainment of its const.i.tuency in ways that approve themselves to the a.s.sociates in charge. But it is not so much entertainment that is wanted as an opportunity for sociability, occasions when all the youth of the community can meet for mutual acquaintance and the beginnings of courtship, and for the stimulus that comes from human a.s.sociation. If a.s.sociation and activity are characteristic of normal social life, it is unreasonable to suppose that rural young people will be contented to vegetate. If they cannot have legitimate opportunities to realize their impulse to a.s.sociated activity, they will provide less satisfactory unconventional opportunities. One of the best means for promoting sociability and providing an outlet for youthful energy in concert has been found in the use of music. The old-fashioned singing-school filled a real need and its pa.s.sing has left a distinct gap. Where musical gatherings have been revived experience has shown that they are a most effective stimulus to a new community consciousness. The country church choir has long been regarded as a useful social as well as religious inst.i.tution, but the community chorus is far more effective. It is possible to uncover latent talent and to cultivate it so that it will furnish more attractive entertainment for the people than that which is imported at far greater expense from outside. Among the foreigners who are finding their way into rural localities, there is sometimes discovered a musical ability that outranks the native, and no other method of approach to the immigrant is so easy as by giving his young people a place in the social activities of the community.

173. =Continuation Schooling.=--A further use for the community house is educational. The older education of the district school was defective, and the new education is not enjoyed by many a farmer's boy or girl, because they cannot be spared in the later years of youth for long schooling. An adaptation of the idea of continuation schools for rural young people so that they may apply the new sciences to country life is greatly to be desired. The local school princ.i.p.al or county superintendent or an extension teacher from a State inst.i.tution may be found available as director, and it belongs to the community to provide the necessary funds. For older people some of the same courses are suitable, but they should be supplemented with lectures of all sorts. It has been demonstrated many times that popular lecturers can be secured at small expense in different parts of the country, especially in these days when there are so many agencies to push the new agricultural science, and other subjects over a wide range of interests will not fail to find exponents if a demand for them can be created.

174. =Community Leadership.=--In the last a.n.a.lysis the prime factor in the rural situation is the community leader. Inst.i.tutions can do little for the enrichment of rural life if personality is wanting. It is the leader's energy that keeps the wheels of the machinery turning, his wisdom that gears their action to the needs of the community. It is desirable that the leader should spring from the community itself, acquainted with its needs and voicing its aspirations. But more communities get their leaders from outside and are often more willing to accept such a leader than if he came up out of their midst, for the proverb is often true that a prophet is without honor in his own country.

175. =Qualities of Leadership.=--Social leadership is dependent upon certain qualities in the person who leads and in those who are led.

The att.i.tude of the people of the community is fundamental. The stimulus that the leader applies must find response in their inner natures if his energy is to become socially effective. If there is not a latent capacity to action, no amount of stimulus will avail. It is safe to a.s.sume that there are few local communities in America that will fail to respond to the right kind of leadership, but certain qualities in the leader are essential for inspiration. It is not necessary that he should be country born, but it is essential that he love the country, appreciate its opportunities, and be conscious of its needs. He cannot hope to call out these qualities in the people if he does not himself possess them. And it must be a genuine love and appreciation that is in him, for only sincerity and perfect honesty can win men for long. It is essential that he have breadth of sympathy for all the interests of the people that he seeks for his own; he may not think lightly of farming or storekeeping, of education or recreation, of morals or religion. He must be devoted to the community, its servant as well as its leader, content to build himself into its life. It is not necessary that the leader should be a trained expert, a finished product of the schools, desirable as such equipment is, but it is essential that he know how to call out the best that is in others, to play upon their emotions, to appeal to their intellects, to energize their wills. He must not only understand their present mental processes, but he must have a vision of them when they have become transformed with new impulses and ambitions, and converted to new and n.o.bler purposes. He needs an unquenchable enthusiasm, a gentle patience, an invincible, aggressive persistency, a contagious optimism that will carry him over every obstacle to ultimate victory. It is essential that he possess fertility of resource to adapt himself to circ.u.mstances, that he have power to call out action and executive ability to direct it. Most important of all is a magnetic personality such as belonged to the great chieftains of history who in war or peace have been able to attract followers and to mould them in obedience to their own will.

176. =Broad Opportunities.=--A leader such as that described has an almost unlimited field of opportunity to mould social life. In the city the opportunity for leadership may seem to be larger, but few can dominate more than a small group. In the country the start may be slower and more discouraging, but the goal reaches out ahead. From better agriculture the leader may draw on the people to better social ideals, to a new appreciation of education and broad culture, to a truer understanding of ethics and religion. He may refashion inst.i.tutions that may express the new in modern terms. But when this is accomplished his work is not done. He may reach out over the countryside and make his village a nucleus for wider progress through a whole county. Even then his influence is not spent. The rural communities in America are feeders of the cities; in them is the nursery of the men and women who are to become leaders in the larger circles of business and professional life, in journalism and literature, in religion and social reform. Many a rural teacher or pastor has built himself into the affections of a boy or a girl, incarnating for them the n.o.blest ideals and stimulating them to achievement and service in an environment that he himself could never hope to fill and with a power of influence that he could never expect to wield. The avenues of opportunity are becoming more numerous. The teacher and the minister have advantages of leadership over the county Young Men's Christian a.s.sociation secretary and the village nurse, but since personal qualities are the determining factors, no man or woman, whatever their position, can make good the claim without proving ability by actual achievement. Any man or woman who enters a particular community for the first time, or returns to it from college, may become a dynamo of blessing to it. There waits for such a leader the loyalty of the boys who may be won for n.o.ble manhood, of the girls who may become worthy mothers of a better generation of future citizens, of men and women for whom the glamour of youth has pa.s.sed into the sober reality of maturer years, but who are still capable of seeing visions of a richer life that they and their children may yet enjoy. There are ready to his hand the inst.i.tutions that have played an important part, however inefficiently in rural life, the heritage of social custom and community character that have come down from the past, and the material environment that helps or hinders but does not control human relations and human deeds. These const.i.tute the measure of his world; these are clay for the potter and instruments for his working; upon him is laid the responsibility of the product.

READING REFERENCES

CURTIS: _Play and Recreation for the Open Country_, pages 195-259.

FISKE: _The Challenge of the Country_, pages 225-266.

COOLEY: _Human Nature and the Social Order_, pages 283-325.

Mc.n.u.tT: "Ten Years in a Country Church," _World's Work_, December, 1910.

MCKEEVER: _Farm Boys and Girls_, pages 129-145.

CARNEY: _Country Life and the Country School_, pages 1-17, 302-327.

PART IV--SOCIAL LIFE IN THE CITY

CHAPTER XXV

FROM COUNTRY TO CITY

177. =Enlarging the Social Environment.=--In the story of the family and the rural community it has become clear that the normal individual as he grows to maturity lives in an expanding circle of social relations. The primary unit of his social life is the family in the home. There the elemental human instincts are satisfied. There while a child he learns the first lessons of social conduct. From the home he enters into the larger life of the community. He takes his place in the school, where he touches the lives of other children and learns that he is a part of a larger social order. He gets into the current of community life and finds out the importance of local inst.i.tutions like the country store and the meeting-house. He becomes accustomed to the ways that are characteristic of country people, and finds a place for himself in the industry and social activity of the countryside.

When the boy who has grown up in a rural community comes to manhood, his natural tendency is to accept the occupation of farming with which he has become acquainted in boyhood, to woo a country maid for a mate, and to make for himself a rural home after the pattern of his ancestors. In that case his social environment remains restricted. His relations are with nature rather than with men. His horizon is narrow, his interests limited. The inst.i.tutions that mould him are few, the forces that stimulate to progress are likely to be lacking altogether.

He need not, but he usually does, cease to grow.

178. =Characteristics of the City.=--Certain individuals find the static life of the country unbearable. Their nature demands larger scope in an expanding environment. To them the stirring town beckons, and they are restless until they escape. The city is a centre of social life where the individual feels a greater stimulus than in the home or the rural community. It resembles the family and the village in providing social relations and an interchange of ideas, but it surpa.s.ses them in the large scale of its activities. It presents many of the same social characteristics that they do, but geared in each case for higher speed. Its activities are swifter and more varied. Its a.s.sociations are more numerous and kaleidoscopic. Its people are less independent than in the country; control, economic and political, is more pervasive, even though crude in method. Change is more rapid in the city, because the forces that are at work are charged with dynamic energy. Weakness in social structure and functioning is conspicuous.

In the large cities all these are intensified, but they are everywhere apparent whenever a community pa.s.ses beyond the village stage. The line that separates the village or small town from the city is an arbitrary one. The United States calls those communities rural that have a population not exceeding twenty-five hundred, but it is less a question of population than of interests and activities. When agriculture gives place to trade or manufacturing as the leading economic interest; when the community takes on the social characteristics that belong to urban life; and when places of business and amus.e.m.e.nt a.s.sume a place of importance rather than the home, the school, and the church, the community pa.s.ses into the urban cla.s.s.

Names and forms of government are of small consequence in cla.s.sification compared with the spirit and ways of the community.