These ministers agree not to proselytize, not to encourage lifting members from another church, not to receive children into the Sunday-school from families of another flock, not to pick up new-comers without advertising them and waiting a reasonable length of time for a claimant. This document of “nots”—of things not to be done—naïvely uncovers the teasing things that were done behind curtains.
Dispensing With Mission Aid
Before reading further, you will wish to know whether there is much of this sort of thing going on in rural America; whether, in fact, it is not fussing over trifles to beckon anybody to look at this thing.
The best authorities, after a long study on this subject, are quoted as estimating that the amount of Protestant home-mission money annually wasted in competitive religion in rural communities is at present $3,000,000; and if we may generalize from twenty-five thoroughly studied counties, widely separated, where there are 211 churches aided by home-mission money, of which 149 are disastrously competitive, “most of the home-mission aid which is now granted could be withdrawn without any danger whatsoever of leaving communities (rural) with inadequate facilities.”
The official report goes on to say, “Aside from any possible loss in denominational prestige, which a purely objective study such as this can not undertake to measure, on a careful examination of all the data at hand, it seems that 149 of the 211 aided churches in these counties might be dispensed with, to the general advantage of the religious life in their communities and to the greater glory of the Kingdom of God.”
This thing, look at it from any angle you please, is as rust on the wheat, a rot in the potato, a blight on the peach-tree, a boll-weevil in the cotton. God knows that the farmer already carries along enough of a handicap in community matters without being afflicted with this canker on his religion, as a discipline. It certainly looks like jumping on the man that’s down. But this sin against the farmer is not the worst of the wicked business.
Worse Than Wasted
What hurts most in this paradoxical practice is the prostitution of the most beautiful gift in all religion.
“Missions!”
The very word conjures up angels of mercy. It brings to mind the last words of Christ to his disciples and to his followers of all time. And this mission money (it is not so pathetic that it sometimes is the widow’s mite or that it is sometimes earned in feebleness with many a pain) is the purest money handled by men. It is the visible sign of tears of longing for love to govern men. Missions are the church’s great romance. When out of the barrenness and weakness of my little life, I put into the hands of the church a gift for the whomsoever, in faith, I do it with a prayer that it will help bring peace to some soul, harmony to some family, blessing to some community which is beyond my power otherwise to help.