Outcasts From the Church
In their recent study, “The Town and Country Church,” Dr. H. N. Morse and Dr. de S. Brunner, of the Institute of Social and Religious Research, have this convincing word to say about the church and the farm tenant:
“The church in the country areas is not, generally speaking, the church of the landless man. In a study of all the churches in 179 counties, located in 44 States, the situation, which we believe is reliably representative of conditions in the United States as a whole, is this: The percentage of farm owners who are members of churches in the South is 59.5, while of tenants who are members the percentage is 33.5; in the Southwest, of owners, 26.2, while of tenants, 9.2; in the Northwest, of owners, 16.4, while of tenants, 7.4; in the Middle West, of owners, 47.9, while of tenants, 20.3; in the Prairie, of owners, 55.6, while of tenants, 15.8.”
These two authorities on the farmer’s church, draw from their study of the high and low tenancy areas in 175 counties this further conclusion: “The larger the proportion of farm tenants in an area, the more conspicuously unreached by the church is the landless man.” Here are their figures, see for yourself:
“In counties where tenancy runs from 0 to 10 per cent., the percentage of farm owners who are church members is 13.7, while the percentage of tenants who are church members is 12.4; where tenancy runs from 11 to 25 per cent., the percentage of owners as church members is 26.8, while of tenants, 19.8; where tenancy runs from 26 to 50 per cent., the percentage of owners is 48.2, while of tenants, 23.6; where tenancy runs over 50 per cent., the percentage of owners who are church members is 63.6, while the percentage of tenants who are church members is 23.9.”
When we look into this statement, it is plain that in the low tenancy areas the “related tenants” on “family lands” bulk large, and they rank, as we know, with owners themselves; but when we get into the high tenancy areas, we strike the core of tenants unrelated to the landlord. Here is the mass of our 5,500,000 landless tenant folk, and here is where the church has weakened and fallen down. Five millions of these white landless tenants are in the high tenancy areas. And applying this church study to our problem, while the church reaches 55 per cent. of the owners in these areas it reaches only 24 per cent. of the tenants. That is, 1,200,000 of these landless tenants only are inside the circle of direct religious influence, and 3,800,000 are outside. If these 5,000,000 persons had been owners of land, or inheritors of land in waiting, the church would have reached 2,750,000 of them instead of 1,200,000; in other words here are 1,550,000 tenant people who are outcasts from the church simply because they are landless folk. And these outcasts—these religionless pariahs—are on the increase from year to year as tenancy increases its hold upon the nation.
One Hundred Per Cent. Material for Religion
It surely will not be misunderstood if a layman should call to mind that the genius of Christianity is its perennial Gospel—just good news—to the poor, the broken in life’s struggle. If a fitter multitude than these tenants for the good tidings of the Christ can be found on the face of the earth, I would like to learn of them. The ordinary life of these outcasts, these wanderers from spot to spot seeking the sun that refuses to shine, has precisely all of those breakdowns which the Christian religion promises to repair—poverty, invalidism, death, sin. It seems to me that these pariahs are just naturally made to order for the kind of religion that the American church has to offer; but as I see it, and I have looked this thing in the face from angle after angle, they haven’t got a ghost of a show at it the way the church system of the country at present works out. Speaking straight from the shoulder, the devil wins, unless—And where is the person who will rise and name the great “unless” that can fix this church system up and set the heel of the church on Satan’s neck?
The history of the church, running back through the centuries, is, as I read it, dotted with awakenings, with the rise of a thought, of a hope-dream, with the rise of a man who out of the very fog and blackness of popular waywardness, wantonness, unbelief, depravity, has stood up and successfully denied that human life must be all to the strong and that the poor must live unillumined. This has been the type of man who has lit the torch of love and solicitude and faith in the world that has lighted the race generation after generation. Is this not the time in the life of the American church and this the occasion in America for such a man to arise and call a halt upon the detour of the church around the farm tenant?