The Church on the Changing Frontier Part 6

Development and Distribution

The differences in religious development and psychology according to the time of settlement are well ill.u.s.trated by these counties. Generally speaking, Beaverhead grew up before the Church had made much headway. It is conservative. The general att.i.tude is the wary one of "Let the Church alone." Men cla.s.s churches among those feminine luxuries with which a real, red-blooded man has little to do. On the other hand, Union, the most recently developed county of the four, still has a marked "church consciousness." The majority of the people have not yet broken with the habits and customs of the more closely settled and churched Middle West from which they came. The other two counties combine these two conditions.

Part of Sheridan is like Union, a region newly homesteaded. Part of it is like Beaverhead, old and settled with frontier habits. Hughes, on the threshold of the West, retains the frontier sentiment of all the other counties.

[Ill.u.s.tration: NO ROOM FOR BOTH

The Presbyterian Church at Melrose, Montana, and its next-door neighbor, a deserted saloon.]

Church work has been going on in these counties since 1867, when Protestant work was started at Bannock, in Beaverhead County. Churches were organized in the other counties in succeeding decades. The first Protestant church was organized in Hughes between 1870 and 1880, in Sheridan and Union Counties between 1880 and 1890. In this comparatively short time, some churches have gone under. Beaverhead has had nine Protestant churches, of which six are now active. One church, located just outside the border of the county in Melrose, a small hamlet, is included in this report. Dillon, the county seat, has four churches, or one Protestant church for about every 675 persons. Outside Dillon, the habitable rural area of the county has two Protestant churches, or one church for about every 1,800 square miles and for about every 2,300 persons. Roman Catholics have two organized churches in the county, Mormons have one active and one inactive church, and there is one Christian Science church.

[Ill.u.s.tration: COMMUNITY MAP OF SHERIDAN COUNTY, WYOMING]

[Ill.u.s.tration: MAP SHOWING CHURCHES AND PARISH BOUNDARIES OF SHERIDAN COUNTY]

[Ill.u.s.tration: CHURCH AND COMMUNITY MAP OF BEAVERHEAD COUNTY]

[Ill.u.s.tration: MAP SHOWING CHURCHES AND PARISH BOUNDARIES OF UNION COUNTY, NEW MEXICO]

[Ill.u.s.tration: COMMUNITY MAP OF UNION COUNTY, NEW MEXICO]

Sixteen Protestant churches have been organized in Hughes County, all but one of which are now active. Pierre, the county seat, with six of the churches, has a Protestant church for about every 535 people. Outside Pierre and the section occupied by the Crow Creek Indian Reservation, the rural area of the county has one Protestant church for about every seventy-three square miles, and for every 300 persons. There are three Catholic churches outside the Indian Reservation.

Sheridan County has had twenty-two Protestant churches, of which seventeen are now active and two are inactive. The city of Sheridan has nine Protestant churches, one church for about every 1,020 persons; outside Sheridan, the habitable area of the county has one Protestant church for about every 220 square miles, and for about every 1,130 persons. The county has five Catholic churches, a Mormon, a Christian Science, and a Theosophical organization.

The newest county of the four has the most churches. Thirty-nine Protestant churches have been organized in Union County, thirty-one of which are now active. Clayton, the county seat, has four churches, one for about every 625 persons; outside Clayton, the rural area of the county has one Protestant church for about every 280 square miles and for about every 525 persons. There are five organized Catholic churches.

The four counties now have a total of seventy active Protestant churches representing eleven different denominations, but there is an acute need of a more strategic distribution. Churches located in the city of Sheridan will henceforth be referred to as "city" churches; churches located in the towns of Dillon, Pierre and Clayton will be referred to as "town"

churches; those located in villages, a cla.s.sification applying to all centers with a population of 250 to 2,500, will be referred to as "village" churches; and those located in hamlets of less than 250 population or the open country will be known as "country" churches.

Cla.s.sified in this way, nine, or 13 per cent. of the total, are "city"

churches; thirteen, or 19 per cent., are "town" churches; fourteen, or 20 per cent., are "village" churches, and thirty-four, or 48 per cent., are "country" churches. Other than Protestant churches will be discussed in a separate chapter.

G.o.d's Houses

A live church organization should have a building of its own. It is hard, indeed, to preach the reality of religion without a visible house of G.o.d.

Yet nearly one-third of the organizations have no buildings and must depend on school houses, homes or depots. Some of these churches, located in strategic places, acutely need buildings and equipment if they are to hold their own in the future. For others, however, the possession of buildings would be a tragedy, since they would thus become a.s.sured of a permanency which is not justified. All the city and town churches have buildings, as well as twelve of the fourteen village, and fifteen of the thirty-four country, churches. In addition, two inactive organizations have buildings which are available and are used to some extent.

[Ill.u.s.tration: EPISCOPAL CHURCH AND PARISH HOUSE

Beaverhead County, Montana.]

The majority of the buildings are of wood; fourteen are of brick, cement or adobe. Unfortunately, the Range has no typical pioneer architecture of its own. Most of the buildings are reminiscent of New England forbears.

Many of them look barren and unkempt. Standing forlorn upon the plains, most of the open country churches are unrelieved by any sign of trees.

Little or no effort has been made to make them attractive. Thirty buildings are lighted by electricity. Twenty-two churches are of the usual one-room type, eleven have two-room buildings, four have three rooms, three have five rooms, six have six rooms or more. A few possess special facilities for social purposes. One town church has a parish house. Nine have extra rooms and some special equipment, including three gymnasiums. Stereopticon outfits have been installed in one city and in two town churches. One other town church borrows a stereopticon once a month from a public school, and one town church occasionally borrows the county moving-picture machine.

A new kind of community house was built last summer by the Sheridan Presbyterian Church. It is a summer camp on a mountain stream not far from the Big Horn Mountains, about twenty miles south of Sheridan. The building is used for kitchen, dining room, rest room and general headquarters. Each family brings its own tent when using the camp. The purpose is to make it a place for tired people, and especially for those who have no cars or other means of taking an outing during some part of the hot weather. The community idea expresses itself in a plan whereby those owning cars shall sometimes transport a family that otherwise might have no outing.

Church property is valued at $592,323, and it is noteworthy that the churches have acquired property of such value in so short a time. The fact that church growth is a present-day phenomenon is ill.u.s.trated by the two splendid buildings erected since this survey was made, and the preparations for a third which will cover an entire block. The highest value of any city church is $70,000, of any town church $75,000, of any village church $7,000 and of any country church, $4,000. Twenty-eight churches have parsonages, their total valuation amounting to $61,300, or an average value of $2,189.

About one-third of the churches carry some indebtedness on their property.

Twenty-five churches report a total debt of $57,695, of which amount $28,500 was borrowed by six city churches, $21,700 by four town churches, $2,905 by five village churches and $4,590 by eight country churches. The money was spent for new buildings, new parsonages, repairs and, in one case, for a garage to hold the preacher's Ford. Curiously enough, instead of being a hardship, working to pay off a debt often brings church members together into a unified working group. The interest paid ranges from 4 to 8 per cent.

Church Membership

Even more important than the material a.s.sets of the churches are their human a.s.sets--their members. The total number enrolled in Protestant churches in the four counties is 5,820. Active members number 3,956, or 68 per cent., while 1,013, or 17.4 per cent., are cla.s.sed as inactive, i.e., they neither attend church services nor contribute to church support, and 851, or 14.6 per cent., are non-resident. The country and city churches have the highest proportion of non-resident members--16.9 per cent. and 16.6 per cent., respectively; the town figure is next at 11.7 per cent., and the village percentage is 9.83. These people have moved, or else live too far away to come to church services. In addition to the enrolled membership, there are members of distant churches who have never transferred to local churches. They are scattered through all these counties, and their number is, of course, not known and cannot be estimated. Some may have been asked to join local churches, but it is certain that some have not, and that no one knows or seems to care if they have been members of some church elsewhere. They may attend local churches occasionally, but it is more likely that they do not. Some of them feel like the little hard-working ranch lady who said, "I was a church member out in Iowa, thirty-five years ago, but I've never done lifted by letter and I've been here so long now, I guess I never will."

[Ill.u.s.tration: CHART I]

The Protestant church member who moves away is not followed up by his church as a general thing. This is partly due to frequent ministerial changes, partly to the lack of well-kept church records, and partly to lack of interest. Of course, the fault is not only with the churches on the Range; it is a shortcoming of the churches everywhere. Since, however, a transient population is characteristic of this country, it would seem to be a matter of prime importance for churches to keep track of the movements of their members. This matter concerns not only local churches and their denominations, but also calls for cooperation among different denominations.

[Ill.u.s.tration: CHART II]

Most of the churches are in the larger centers. Of the total resident church membership nearly 43 per cent. belong to city churches, 28 per cent. to town churches, 11 per cent. to village churches and only 15 per cent. to country churches. As the center decreases in size, the more it draws from the surrounding country. Thus, 93 per cent. of the total resident families of city churches live in the city and 7 per cent. live outside; 87 per cent. of the total resident families of town churches live in the town and 13 per cent. live outside; 62 per cent. of the total resident families belonging to village churches live in villages and 38 per cent. live outside.

Somehow the Church has failed to appeal to the men. A prominent man who never came to church in one of the towns in the counties studied, said to a minister: "Here is a hundred dollars. For G.o.d's sake, don't let the church go down!" This man realized that the community needed the church, but he chose to help from the outside. This is the prevailing att.i.tude: the men are not antagonistic, but they are indifferent. All the counties have a higher proportion of men than of women in the population; each has a higher proportion of women than men in the church membership.

Beaverhead, preponderant by 58.3 per cent. in males, has the lowest proportion of adult men in the church membership, 23.8 per cent. Union has the highest proportion of men, 32.7 per cent. For all the churches of the four counties, 30.5 per cent. of all church members are males over twenty-one, 8.6 per cent. are males under twenty-one, 47.5 per cent. are females over twenty-one and 13.4 per cent. are females under twenty-one.

A larger proportion of young people are enrolled in the city and town churches than in those of the village and open country. City and town church memberships have 9 per cent. boys, and 14.36 per cent. girls.

Villages have 6.75 per cent. boys, and 12.26 per cent. girls. Open country churches have 8.19 per cent. boys, and 9.26 per cent. girls. One reason for the small number of young people is that many grew up without the Church. The children now growing up have better church opportunities. The hope of the Church for the future is to reach the children.

The small church prevails on the Range, the average active membership being only about fifty-seven. For the various groups, the active membership is as follows:

AVERAGE ACTIVE MEMBERSHIP

Country Village Town City Average Beaverhead 8 6 81 49 Hughes 8 39 109 59 Sheridan 33 62 185 117 Union 16 33 66 24

The country churches have an average of eighteen, the village churches thirty-five, the town churches ninety-one and the city churches 185 members each. Forty-nine of the seventy churches have fifty active members or less, and thirty-six, or 51.4 per cent., of these have less than twenty-five each. Twenty-one churches have each more than fifty active members. Forty-four out of the forty-nine churches of less than fifty members are either in villages or in the open country. All the churches of more than 100 members are either town or city churches.

[Ill.u.s.tration: CHART III]

[Ill.u.s.tration: CHART IV]

It is an acknowledged fact that the size of membership has a good deal to do with church efficiency; in a word, that the small church is a losing proposition. Until the present, the small church on the Range has been a necessity because of the small and scattered population. It is only the larger centers that have been able to support good-sized churches. Even with the coming of irrigation, this Western country will never be as thickly populated as the East or Middle West. Nor can a fair comparison be made between the churches in the larger centers in the Middle West and far West. A different policy is likewise needed here because many of these centers in the West are surrounded with large unchurched areas and on that account their churches should be strategic centers for a radiating religious work.

[Ill.u.s.tration: CHART V]

In the matter of gain or loss in membership, it is to be noted that, during the last year, a little more than half the churches made a net gain in membership, sixteen churches broke even on the year and seventeen showed a net loss. Thus, 3 per cent. of all the churches remained stationary, 24 per cent. lost in membership and 53 per cent. gained. Of the churches with 50 or more members, 82 per cent. gained; of those with less than 50 members only 33.3 per cent. gained.

Seven hundred and sixty-four new members were taken in during the year.

Forty per cent. of these were taken in by letter, the rest on confession of faith. This gain by confession was about 13 per cent. of the previous net active membership. Gain was distributed according to s.e.x and age as follows:

Adult male 31.0% Adult female 42.4% Boys 11.7% Girls 14.9%