The Evolution of the Country Community / A Study in Religious Sociology

by Warren H. Wilson

In another chapter the common schools are more fully discussed. Here it may be said only that the creation of such a system was an honor to any people. The farmers who out of a splendid idealism placed a schoolhouse at every cross roads, on every hilltop and in every mountain valley, exact a tribute of praise from their successors. The unit of measurement of the school district, on which this system was based, was the day's journey of a child six years of age. Two miles must be its longest radius. The generation who spanned this continent with the measure of an infant's pace, mapped the land into districts, erected houses at the centers, and employed teachers as the masters of learning for these little states, were men of statesmanlike power. The country school is a nobler monument of the land farmer than anything else he has done.

The rural "academy" was the most influential school of the land farmer's time. Situated at the center of leading communities, in New England, Pennsylvania and the older Eastern States, it was often under the control or the influence of the parish minister. It generally exerted a great influence for the building of the church and the community. Its teachers were men of scholarly ideals. Its students were from the locality, being selected by ambition for learning, and by their ability to pay the tuition.

The development of the high schools has generally resulted in the abandonment of the academies. A few have survived and have adapted themselves to new times. But it is to be doubted whether the common schools have so far done as much for building and for organizing country communities, for providing local leadership, for building churches, as did the rural academies of New England, Pennsylvania and other Eastern States.

The farmer's church is the classic American type of church at its best. The farming economy succeeded to the pioneer economy without serious break. The troubles of the country church have their beginnings in the period of the exploiter which is to follow, but the farmer developed the church of the pioneer with sympathy and consistency. The church of the farmer still values personal salvation above all. The revival methods and the simplicity of doctrine have remained, but the farmer has added typical methods of his own.

The effect of this individualism is exhibited in the multiplication of churches among farmers. So long as it is admitted that the church is for personal salvation, it does not need to be a social institution. A small group is as effective as a large one for securing salvation for individuals. Two churches or three may as well serve a community as one, if personal salvation be the service rendered. The gospel is for the farmer good tidings,—not a call to social service. The result of the farmer period has been, therefore, the multiplication of competitive country churches. An instance of this competitive condition is: the community in Kansas in which among four hundred people resident in a field, there are seven churches, each of them attempting to maintain a resident pastor. In Centre County, Pa., in a radius of four miles from a given point, there are twenty-four country churches. In the same territory within a radius of three miles are sixteen of these country churches. This condition is satisfactory to the ideals of the farmer. If the farmer type were permanent these churches might serve permanently for the ministry of personal salvation. They are well attended by devout and religious-minded people. Their condemnation is not in the farmer economy but in the inevitable coming of the exploiter and the husbandman with their different experience and different type of mind.

In this period the minister frequently is himself a tiller of the soil. Many of the older churches had land, ten or twenty or forty acres, which the minister was expected to till, and from it to secure a part of his living. A church at Cranberry, N. J., had a farm of one hundred acres until the close of the nineteenth century. But with the coming of the exploiter and the husbandman the minister ceases to be an agriculturist.

Like unto the tillage of the soil by the minister was the "donation" to the minister, of vegetables, corn, honey and other farm products. At one time this filled a large place in the supply of the minister's living. In various communities the custom has remained with fine tenacity in the presentation to the minister of portions of farm produce throughout the year. But the portions so given are fewer, as years pass, and the total quantity small. The donation of vegetables and farm produce has survived in but a few places. The modes of life which succeeded to the farmer economy are dependent on cash for the distribution of values, and the "donation," if it remain at all, is a gift of money. Frequently the "donation" has survived as a social gathering, being perpetuated in one of its functions only, its earlier purposes and its essential form being forgotten.

The church of the land farmer corresponded by logical social causation to the social economy of this type. It was seated with family pews generally rented by the family group and sometimes owned in fee. In the South the slave-holding churches, which have all passed away, had galleries for the slaves, who worshipped thus under the same roof with their masters. The preaching of this period was directed to the development of group life. Its ethical standards were those of the household group, in which private property in land, domestic morality, filial and domestic experiences furnished the stimuli.

The land-farmer's church had some organizations to correspond to the differences in social life. The presence of the children in the family group is represented in the Sunday schools and parochial schools built during this period. The schools are in many cases highly organized, with separate recognition of infancy, adolescence and middle life. In Protestant churches the particular concerns of women and the religious service rendered by them take form in women's societies in the churches, mostly charitable and missionary.

Finally, at the close of the land-farmer period, about 1890, there sprang up the young people's societies, which in the ten closing years of the land-farmer period reached a membership of hundreds of thousands among the Protestant churches. These societies of young people were organized in the churches to correspond to the growing self-consciousness among adolescent members of the land-farmer's household. The young men and women in the maturing of the family group came to have a life of their own. As frequently happens, the family group reached its highest development and perfection just before it was to pass away.