Over considerable areas a large proportion of the ministers are uneducated. Often they are illiterate and entirely unfitted to render service acceptable to the more intelligent part of their people. In most of the State, the standard of education for ministers is low. It is in part due to the failure of an insufficiently educated ministry to stimulate the intellectual life of the people, that from 1,500,000 to 2,000,000 people in the State have no public libraries.
Unless a larger and stronger social and religious institution is created in the country districts than is now found in the country church, the more vigorous young people will for the most part leave the country, and an inferior class will take their places on the farm. A process of reverse selection will therefore set in which must result in the general debasement of our rural population and ultimately of our nation as a whole. As is well known, this process of decadence is already taking place over very large areas in rural America.
CHAPTER IV
WHERE CHURCH EFFICIENCY IS LOWEST
The facts summarized in the previous chapter show that in rural Ohio the church as a whole is not adequately performing its great and difficult task. It is equally evident that no institution could hope for a high degree of success unless more progressive in method and administration. Furthermore, unless the urban officials or directors in charge of rural churches come to appreciate the fundamental importance of the country church problem, address themselves more seriously to the task in hand, and make really effective use of improved organization and available human and material resources, the country church will continue to decline. While there are very many successful churches, and many rural communities socially, morally, and economically prosperous, failures occur in equally large numbers.
A most striking illustration of the churches’ inefficiency may be found in southern and southeastern Ohio. Here, in a region covering at least eighteen counties, the failure of the churches may fairly be called pathetic. These counties are Adams, Athens, Brown, Clermont, Gallia, Highland, Hocking, Jackson, Lawrence, Meigs, Monroe, Morgan, Noble, Pike, Ross, Scioto, Vinton, and Washington. In this area, after more than a hundred years of the work of the churches, the religious, social, and economic welfare of the people are going down. Although the churches have been here for more than a century, no normal type of organized religion is really flourishing, while the only kind which, during the past fifteen years, has been gaining ground, the cult of the Holy Rollers, is scarcely better than that of a Dervish. The churches have failed and are failing to dispel ignorance and superstition, to prevent the increase of vice, the spread of disease, and the general moral and spiritual decadence of the people.
Most of the information concerning the Eighteen Counties, as for convenience, this region is hereafter called, was derived from personal investigation on the ground by Mr. Gill, from the testimony of two trained investigators, and from interviews and correspondence with local merchants, physicians, clergymen, school teachers, superintendents of schools and churches, farmers, and Sunday school workers. Information confirming what had already been received was found in the statistical reports of the national and state governments. Some of the results of a study of the reports of the Ohio Bureau of Vital Statistics and the United States Census are given in Table A and in Maps A, and Maps 1 to 10, on pages 26 to 36.
In Map A the heavily shaded area indicates the Eighteen Counties included in this region. Ten other counties bordering upon them are shaded more lightly. Many communities in these ten bordering counties are influenced by the migration of population from the Eighteen Counties.