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

by Warren H. Wilson

The modifying influence of husbandry upon the church and its teaching is illustrated in the following incident. A farmer in Missouri had a good stand of corn which promised all through the summer to produce an excellent crop. Abundance of sun and rain favored the farmer's hope that his returns would be large, but in the fall the crop proved a failure. The farmer at once cast about for the cause of this disappointment. He had his soil analyzed by a scientist and discovered that it was deficient in nitrogen. The next year he devoted to supplying this lack in the soil and in the year following had an abundant return in corn. "Now that experience turned me away," said he, "from the country church, because the teaching of the country church as I had been accustomed to it was out of harmony with the study of the situation and the conquest over nature. I had been taught in the country church to surrender under such conditions to the will of Providence." The country church of the husbandman must therefore be a church in harmony with the tillage of the soil by science. Like the farm households about it, the church will possess a large wealth of tradition, but the church of the scientific farmer must be open to the teachings of science and must be responsive, intelligent and alert in the intellectual leadership of the people.

A church of this sort is at West Nottingham, Maryland. The minister Rev. Samuel Polk, had been discouraged by the inattention of his people to his message. He had come to feel that this is an unbelieving age and had surrendered himself to the steadfast performance of his duties, the preaching of the truth faithfully and the ministry to his people so far as they would receive it. In addition he had the task of tilling forty acres of land which belongs to the church. This he was doing faithfully, but without much intelligent interest.

An address on the country church in an agricultural college sent him home with new ideas. He saw that his life as a farmer and as a preacher had to be made one. He determined to preach to farmers and to till his land as an example of Christian husbandry. He began as a scholar by studying the scientific use of his land. He found at once that the farmers about him were forced to study the tillage of their soil, because it had been exhausted of fertility by methods of farming no longer profitable. In the first year the preacher raised, by means of a dust mulch through a dry summer, a crop of one hundred and seventy-five bushels of potatoes. Meantime his preaching had been enlivened with new illustrations and he was enabled to enforce, to the amazement of his hearers, new impressions with old truths. The Scripture teaching which had become dull and scholastic became live and modern, as he preached the Old Testament to a people who were recognizing the sacredness of land. His audiences began to increase. His influence on his people very shortly passed bounds and reserves. When at the end of the season his potato crop came in, the farmers gave sign of recognizing his leadership as a farmer and as a preacher. Within a year this man had taken a place as a first citizen, which no one else in the community could hold. Because he was a preacher he could become the leading authority upon farming and because he must needs be a farmer he found it possible to preach with greater acceptance.

This pastor gave up the methods of bookish preparation for preaching. He preached as the Old Testament men did, to the occasion and to the event. He spoke to the community as being a man himself immersed in the same life as theirs. On a recent occasion when a woman was very sick in one of the farm houses and had suffered from the neglect of her neighbors, his sermon consisted of an appeal to visit the sick. That afternoon the invalid was called on by thirty-eight people and sent a message before night, begging the minister to hold the people back.

There are a few ministers throughout the country who are successful farmers. Many ministers are speculators in farm land. They belong in the exploiter class. One more instance should be given of the preacher who promotes agriculture. In a recent discussion the writer was asked, "Do you then believe that the minister should attend the agricultural college," and he replied, "No. The agricultural college should be brought to the country church."

At Bellona, New York, the ministers of two churches, Methodist and Presbyterian, united with their officers in a farmers' club, to which others were admitted. This club under the leadership of Rev. T. Maxwell Morrison, makes the nucleus of its work the study of the agriculture of the neighborhood and the improvement of it. Lecturers from Cornell University are brought throughout the year into the country community to take up in succession the various aspects of farming which may be improved. The market is studied, by chemical analysis the nature of the soil is determined, and the possibilities of the community are raised to their highest value by careful investigation.

This farmers' club has social features as well. Other topics besides farming are occasionally studied but the business of the club is economic promotion of the well-being of the community. Incidentally, it has furnished a social center for the countryside. The churches which have had to do with it have been enlarged, their membership extended and even their gifts to foreign missions have been increased in the period of growth of the farmers' club.

The elements of permanent cultivation of the soil are found in greater numbers among the Mormons, Scotch Irish Presbyterians, Pennsylvania Germans, who are the best American agriculturists, than among the more unstable populations of farmers. Those elements, however, are, simply speaking, the following.

A certain austerity of life always accompanies successful and permanent agriculture. By this is meant a fixed relation between production and consumption.[15] Successful tillers of the soil labor to produce an abundant harvest. They live at the same time in a meager and sparing manner. Production is with them raised to its highest power and consumption is reduced to its lowest. This means austere living. Such communities are found among the Scotch Irish farmers. Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, is peopled with them and their tillage of the soil has continued through two centuries.

A notable illustration is in Illinois. The permanence of the conditions of country life in this community is indicated by the long pastorate of the minister who has just retired. Coming to the church at forty-eight years of age, after other men have ceased from zealous service, he ministered forty-two years to this parish of farmers, and has recently retired at the age of ninety, leaving the church in ideal condition. "The Middle Creek Church is distinctly a country charge, located in the Southwest corner of Winnebago Township, of the County of Winnebago.