The Evolution of the Country Community Part 12

Of all human acts of the conscientious man worship is the most highly symbolic. They who worship are alike, and in their likeness are unlike to others. It is an expression of their awareness of resemblance and of difference. The definitions of consciousness of kind, as a sociological process, go a long way to explain without further comment, both the strength and the weakness of the churches in America.

The churches have to struggle with a narrow and small social horizon.

Few people are so conscious of their kinship with all others in their community that they desire those others to worship with them. The sense of unlikeness to others is, unfortunately, as strong in their feelings as the sense of likeness unto their own. In the American community with many newcomers, and some foreigners, this sense of unlikeness is natural. It is not to be wondered that men should think themselves more like unto their old neighbors than unto the new. It is not surprising that with new economic processes men should ignore their unity with those who co-operate with them in getting a living, and should be conscious of their unity with those whose living comes in the same form.

As a result, we have working men's churches and "rich men's clubs,"

"college churches," "student pastors," churches which minister to old families, and new chapels built by tenant farmers. But these phases of worship are peculiar to the times of transition in which we live. The immaturity of our economic processes, and the greater immaturity of our economic knowledge, explain the failure of worshiping people to a.s.semble by communities; but the process which a.s.sembles men of kindred mind to worship together now is capable of bringing men together in larger wholes.

The spirit of federation is in the air. The longing for religious unity is a response to the stimuli of common experience in the same locality.

Men who meet throughout the week, if they worship at all, discover a desire to worship together. The coming of great occasions and the celebrations of anniversaries, train them in some common a.s.semblies. I remember how the tidings of the death of President McKinley brought together all the people of the community in an act of worship. Their response to a profound sense of danger was a community response, and the church which was prompt to open its doors, found men of all faiths within.

At a recent meeting of the National Body of one of the greatest Protestant churches, proceedings were halted by the moderator, who read a telegram announcing the friendly action of another religious body.

This action looked toward union of the two denominations. It was a response to overtures from the body there in session. Instantly the whole a.s.sembly sprang up, applauding and cheering, and led by a clear, musical voice, broke out in a hymn. That hymn is profoundly sociological in its language, and its use is increasing among Christian people. It expresses that worship which is a consciousness of kind. Its words are

Blest be the tie that binds Our hearts in Christian love: The fellowship of kindred minds Is like to that above.

Before our Father's throne We pour our ardent prayers; Our fears, our hopes, our aims, are one, Our comforts and our cares.

We share our mutual woes, Our mutual burdens bear, And often for each other flows The sympathizing tear.

When we asunder part, It gives us inward pain; But we shall still be joined in heart, And hope to meet again.

It would be hard to find a member of a Protestant church in America, among the older denominations, who does not know these words, and is not accustomed to use them in response to the stimuli of kinship with other Protestant Christians.

The consciousness of kind is an awareness of differences and resemblances. It is a finding of one's self among those to whom one is like, and an aversion to those unto whom one is not like. Worship is an expression of this common likeness. It is an enjoyment of fellowship.

The experience of worship is impossible in an atmosphere of difference.

This is a reason for the cleavage of denominations, and the splitting of congregations. Without this separating, men could not enjoy the uniting, and without the aversion, men could not taste the sweets of fellowship.

This brings us very near to the sacred experiences in which men find G.o.d. A very early chapter in the Bible describes G.o.d as the "Friend" of a man. In the succeeding pages he becomes the King, the Priest, the Prophet, and the Father of men. In every one of them the mind of the worshiper has expressed a profound sense, that G.o.d is found by the soul in society. Herbert Spencer has insisted that all religion is ancestor worship, that is, it grows out of the family group.

Simmel teaches that religion is the resultant of the reactions of the individual with his group fellows, and with the group as a whole.

Christian folk are accustomed to express this by calling one another "brothers" and "sisters," meaning clearly that religion is a social experience.

This is not the place for extended biblical interpretation, but I am convinced that the whole course of scripture will testify to this, that in the peaceful, continuing, social unities men have found G.o.d, and in the differences, in their group conflicts, in their wars, and in the oppositions to their enemies, there has been found no religious experience. That is, such conflict has intensified unity, and the resulting unity has been ever richer in religion: but the thoughts for G.o.d have come forth clothed always in terms and t.i.tles of fellowship, unity and kinship.

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 emanc.i.p.ation 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 G.o.d 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 G.o.d is a working force, which follows the cleavage of social cla.s.sification. 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 cla.s.ses. 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, coa.r.s.e 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 cla.s.s 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 cla.s.s 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 a.s.semble 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. b.u.t.terfield, The University of Chicago Press

The Country Church and the Rural Problem, Kenyon L. b.u.t.terfield, 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