The Farmer and His Community

by Dwight Sanderson

During the century in which the United States west of the Alleghanies has been settled conditions have changed with such rapidity that the religious life is still largely dominated by its development during the days of early settlement and the present generation is faced with the problem of readjustment of its religious institutions to meet the present situation. In the days of the pioneer the circuit rider made his rounds over a large district, preaching at school houses and private homes and in the few country churches at intervals of one to three months. As the country became more thickly populated, country churches sprang up and several of them were joined together in the employment of a resident pastor with preaching at the larger churches every week and at the outlying stations once in two or three weeks. Doctrinal beliefs were strong and theological differences were frequently bitter. The preaching was practically the only service of the church, except for an annual "protracted meeting" or revival. The main emphasis was upon the personal salvation of the sinner. Sunday schools had not become a recognized feature of the church and but little thought was given to religious education and training by the church. The minister christened the babies, married the young people and buried the dead, but otherwise, with numerous preaching services, he was unable to do much pastoral work. A large proportion of the rural churches were located in the open country and like the district school were largely neighborhood churches, for bad roads and horse-drawn vehicles made it difficult for people to go over two or three miles. In many cases several churches were established in a single village or in nearby neighborhoods by different denominations and were largely supported by home-missionary aid contributed by the older churches in the East and the wealthier city parishes. Prior to the Civil War when most of our population was engaged in farming and before the exodus of the last half century to the towns and cities, most of the rural churches were fairly well attended, but with the recent decline in rural population, many of them, and particularly those in the open country, have faced the same situation as the district school in that there are now too few people to make possible the economic support of a pastor and church building.

Furthermore, it must be recognized that the standards of rural people have changed as regards the church in the same way that they have concerning the school. When all of the people have had a common school education, many of them have had high school training, a few have been to college, and many of them now and then visit the larger churches of towns and cities, they are no longer satisfied with the occasional preaching of an uneducated man, however religious and earnest he may be. The Sunday school has become an established part of the work of the church and as people have appreciated the value of education in secular affairs, they have come to place more hope in the religious training of their children than in merely saving them by sudden conversion. The church is becoming more and more an institution for the training and expression of religious life rather than only a place for preaching. Moreover, the church now has to meet the competition of other institutions and interests which did not exist in the earlier days. The grange, the lodge, organizations of all sorts, moving pictures, athletics and automobiles, furnish means of association and command the interest and support of the people, where formerly there was only the church for the righteous and the tavern or the saloon for the convivial.

All of these and other factors have conspired to weaken the relative influence of the church in our rural communities and the situation has become so serious in many sections that it has challenged the attention of denominational leaders. During the past fifteen years there have been a series of careful studies of the condition of the rural churches in various parts of the country. These studies have given indisputable evidence of the conditions responsible for the decline of the rural church and of the measures which must be taken if the religious life of the rural community is to be adequately fostered; and they have clearly shown that the problems of the rural church must be solved from the standpoint of meeting the religious needs of the rural community rather than that of the interests of the individual church. In the older parts of the country, and—alas—far too frequently in the newer sections, the most serious obstacle to the religious life of the community is an unnecessary number of churches, which divide its limited resources both of funds and leadership. Overchurching is more largely responsible for the decadence of the rural church than any one factor. Small congregations are unable to support a full time pastor, and where several of them are competing in a small community, it is deprived of the services of a resident minister. Preaching once in two weeks and practically no pastoral visitation are not conducive to the life of a church. The small church maintains its Sunday school with difficulty for there are too few of any one age for a satisfactory division of classes. Equally serious is the fact that the ablest men will not enter the ministry to devote themselves to what they regard as an unnecessary and unchristian competition.

Tompkins County, where I live, is a fair average of rural New York. A recent survey shows that but eight of its twenty-eight rural communities have full time resident pastors, though there are ministers residing in twenty-five parishes who also serve other parishes nearby. Throughout the county there was one church for every 332 people, but the average village church had but 92 active members, and the average country church had but 32. The church membership has remained practically stationary for thirty years, while the attendance has decreased from 21 percent of the rural population in 1890 to 14 percent in 1920. One community of 900 population had five churches, no one of which had a resident pastor or over 45 members, while two of them had but 11 members each and were closed. Six strictly rural communities in the southern part of the county have 16 churches, though none of these places can properly support more than one church with a resident pastor. After a careful study of the whole county, I am of the opinion that if at least one-third of the rural churches were abandoned or combined, the work of the church would be greatly strengthened. This county is cited because it is fairly typical; many worse have been reported in other surveys.

Another handicap of the rural church is the frequent shift of ministers. In Tompkins County only 4 of the 57 churches have had the same pastor for ten years, 17 changed pastors three times in ten years and 17 of the pastors had been in their parishes one year or less. When a minister stays but a year or two, his parishioners tend to be only acquaintances and rarely does he really know them. A minister cannot become well enough acquainted with a new parish to do effective pastoral work in less than a year, and many ministers who have seemingly good programs of work fail to realize them because they attempt to force progress and to secure results more rapidly than is possible. One of the chief duties of the rural pastor is to train leadership. A church is no stronger than its permanent resident leadership. No matter how brilliant the work of the minister, if he has failed to develop local leadership, his work is soon dissipated when he leaves. Now leadership cannot be produced in a year or so and where it is most needed it requires several years to discover and develop it. Unfortunately much of this frequent shifting of rural pastors is directly due to ecclesiastical rule rather than to the needs of the local churches, though much of it results from meager salaries and sectarian rivalries which soon discourage a man who sees larger opportunities for service elsewhere.

Numerous studies of the actual condition of the rural church in many parts of the country all show the futility of denominational competition in maintaining two or three churches where only one is needed or can be supported. Furthermore, the present generation of young married people who desire the best religious influences for their children are no longer much interested in the theological or ecclesiastical differences of the various denominations, and they refuse to support them or do so under protest and with an apathy which makes effective church work impossible. As a result, there has been a strong movement in recent years toward the consolidation of rural churches and for the establishment of what are called "community churches." Although much effort has been given toward getting denominational boards and leaders to form state federations for promoting inter-denominational comity, and although notable progress in this direction has been made in a few states, particularly in Maine and Vermont, yet the chief impetus to the community church movement has come from the people themselves, who have insisted upon a combination of the local churches often in spite of ecclesiastical indifference or opposition. The lack of coal in 1918 induced many churches to hold their services together and in many cases gave an impetus to the idea of their permanent federation.

The term community church has come to be applied to various forms of churches, but whatever its form, its fundamental purpose is the service of the community rather than the advancement of a particular denomination and it admits all Christian people to its fellowship, in contrast to the exclusiveness of the purely denominational church which insists upon the importance of particular theological beliefs or systems of church government.

As the term is now used a "community church" may be a church definitely affiliated with some denomination, it may be a "federated" church, or a "union" church. The union church is unaffiliated with any religious denomination. If it be the only church in a community, it is then a community church, but if one or two others decline to unite, it is a community church only in aspiration. It is this type of independent union church, to which the term community church is most commonly applied by the laity, and such community churches have increased rapidly in the past five years as a protest of the people against denominational competition and inefficiency. These independent community churches have now become so numerous in one or two states that they are holding state conventions. The question at once arises whether if they become affiliated in even the most nominal manner they will not soon constitute what will practically be another denomination and will fail to effect the growth of Christian unity which they desire. On the other hand, denominational leaders who are in entire sympathy with the abolishment of competition and the establishment of but one church in a rural community where only one is needed, point out that the union church loses the advantages of affiliation with a body of churches which have regional and national boards and agencies for giving them assistance and support in their work. The history not only of church but of all sorts of secular organizations, indicates that sooner or later local organizations with common aims and purposes tend to get together in conventions and to establish federations through which they may unite their resources in maintaining agencies to promote the common cause. Most organizations, whether religious or secular, need the stimulus of association with kindred organizations devoted to the same purposes and the help of expert supervision which can be secured only from state or national bodies.

The "federated church" obviates this difficulty to a certain extent. Each of the federating churches maintains its own corporate identity and its affiliation with its own denomination, to which it sends its contributions for benevolences and denominational work. The federating churches form a joint organization for the employment of a minister and use the same building, or use two buildings in common—sometimes one for church and one for Sunday school services or social purposes,—and the church is a community church for all practical purposes. In the long run this usually results in a federated church finally affiliating with the denomination which is preferred by the large majority of its membership and which is least objectionable to the minority.

Denominational leaders, on the other hand, hold that neither "union" or "federated" churches will be permanently satisfactory, but that the community church, though organized on the "federated" principle, should be definitely affiliated with some one denomination, and that a single denominational church which effectively serves the whole community may be truly a "community church."