Look over some of the stories of these churches which are confessedly trying to find their way to a new expression of social religion designed to prevent the wastes of competitive Christianity.
Here are the high points in an Idaho community church: Rural, in a town of 600 souls. Presbyterian by connection, but with members formerly of sixteen different denominations. Membership, 400. Plant worth $50,000, with eighteen separate class-rooms for Sunday-school use. A community house, with gymnasium. Rest room for women and girls. A week-day church school using one hour a week of school time. In summer, a daily vacation Bible school. A Boy Scout troop. A Campfire Girls’ organization. Potato growers and fruit men freely using the community hall. High moral standards reflecting the unity of the people.
Take another community church of farmers in Iowa, in the open country: An architecturally commanding building, providing, like a well-organized school-house, many separate rooms for religious instruction. The church has deliberately packed into its conception of “community church” the idea that, assuming Christianity to have contact with every phase of living, the church has responsibility for providing the auspices under which all social activities of the community take place. What more natural, then, than that the Fourth of July celebration should be around the most beautiful spot in the community, the church? Farmers’ Institute in the church? Young people having a place for good times at the church? A church committee looking after the matter of bringing good families on to farms that are for sale or rent in the community?
Take a certain community church in Indiana. Here is the story of an honest struggle on the part of four church pedigrees to burn their bridges behind them, and, pooling their resources, to start in anew. The peculiar traditions of each cult, however, cling desperately to each group, until, after trying in vain to carry these psychological contradictions along in an artificial unity, in a moment of supreme devotion to the good of their community, they strip off their trade-marks, forget their shibboleths, and step forward into religious freedom.
The community-church movement is not going to create, I surmise, new sects, leaving a residuum of several more denominations. Rather it is a real step towards the organic union of kindred church bodies on the one hand, and so a reduction of sects; and on the other hand, a step towards democratizing every church and making it a real community church.
The Rural Dilemma and the Way Out
It will require only another thousand of these brave, venturesome community churches to turn every select-bodied denomination to looking itself over. This self-criticism will lead the great Protestant church bodies, let us hope, to a church conscience in regard to destructive church competition. Then it will be an easy step to coming to terms with one another in any locality, so as to give the community a chance to have a community church.
The community church, if we can have any faith in mankind, is sure to come along strong. If high officials become obstructionists, they will be swept away; for the people, when they once clearly see, will have their way in churches and religion as in the long run they do in government and politics.
The sooner the great Protestant bodies confess their sins of competition and put their houses in order, the sooner the new day will come for the remote community and the last man.
Some of us know what it is to be a devotee of a great church sect. The absolute rightness of our cult has been no more questionable than our own existence. When our sect was in parallel columns with any other religious sect, we did not, could not yield right of way.