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

by Warren H. Wilson

Mr. Gilbert K. Chesterton, the English critic, has somewhere finely said that the Master in his words to Simon Peter, "Thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church," clearly recognized that Peter was a shuffler and a weakling and a coward and it was upon just such common material that the church was founded. It was not to be an aristocratic organization. Its foundations were not laid upon skill and genius in human character, but upon the weaker and commonplace traits, which universal mankind possesses.

So definite was the appeal of Jesus to the marginal people of his time, that he has been twice criticized unjustly; once in his own time by the Pharisees, and again in our time by the Socialists. The latter have claimed that Jesus was "class conscious," that he was a partisan of the poor, a [proletarian] radical. The unscientific character of Socialism is displayed in this comment upon Jesus. His appeal was to the whole community, as through Christian history his message has come uniformly to men of all degrees, rich and poor, ignorant and learned, bad and good. The religious genius of Jesus is shown in the fact that he recognized what the Socialist does not, that to appeal to the whole community a prophet must address his plea to the people on the margin of the community. His measure of value must be final utility.

One may go at large into this tempting field in illustrations. The artistic experience of mankind is abundant in illustration of it. There is no beauty of the ocean save in its shores—the margin of the boundless expanse. Literary descriptions of the experiences of human love are made up of descriptions of the margins of love. Married life is depicted in courtship, and the sentiments of affection are described in scenes of parting and meeting, which are the margins of companionship.

This principle should be fundamental in all policies of reconstruction of religious and ethical institutions. In the training of men for religious service and for ethical leadership they should be accustomed to think in terms of communal wholes, and this thinking will use as its units of measure the characteristics of the marginal life. It is for this reason that temperance reform in America has been so influential within the past two decades. It is a communal form of ethics. It demands that the community should act together in safeguarding the weaker members of the community, the young men, and the working people. The old temperance propaganda was individualistist. It recorded its results in the number of persons who signed the pledge. Its results were almost as gratifying if the pledges were signed by well-doing and orderly people as if they were signed by drunkards. The modern temperance movement draws its influence from its proposed effect upon the agricultural laborer.

The theological seminary of the past has been a literary institution. During the period of its development the typical Christian was the bright and aspiring young man in a community of boundless resources. To such a man books are the interpreters of life. But in the modern period with the congested population and close social organization, human fellowship is an experience of greater value to most men than books. Since the time of the invention of printing successive quantities of literature have been given to the world, and under the law of diminishing returns literature has come to have for many very small returns. At the time of the Protestant Reformation the value of books in the hands of the common people was infinite. For several generations along with the extension of universal education this infinite value of books continued for the people on the margin of the educated world. But nowadays everybody in American progressive communities can read and write: and in a universally educated population we arrive at the final utility of books in human use. Great masses of poor people and also many people of means use books within narrow limits only. They do not buy them, they do not read them, they do not think in literary terms. Yet they have access to books and they turn from them with a clear sense of intelligent preference for other human values. Books are to them but an alphabet and social life is the story.

My own impression is that the life of the marginal man is social rather than literary. His religion will be a social religion rather than a biblical religion. The weakness of Protestantism is that it stubbornly insists upon literary interpretation of God and upon a biblical ministry, while the population around these Protestant churches exemplifies the diminished value of literature for spiritual uses.

The religious and ethical service of the days to come must interpret the social life of the people. The great mass of the people care as little for wealth as they do for books. The same argument as to the diminished returns of literature may be repeated to describe the diminished returns of private property. The economic revolution since feudal days has exhausted the values of private property in satisfying human need. The time was when property had an infinite value for expressing personality. In days to come private property will still have this value for many individuals. But among common folks generally private property does not seem to have boundless value for human satisfaction. Working men as I have known them do not take pains to get rich. They know the way to wealth by economy and accumulation, but they do not take it. They have a vast preference for the social intercourse, friendly interchanges and mutual dependence by which their life is refreshed, strengthened and sustained. Ethical policies of the future while using literature and private property as efficient implements must interpret social life itself as a flowing spring of religion and morality.

The training of religious and ethical leaders should be undertaken in the theological seminary and in the university in such manner as to standardize the influence of these institutions, by the life not of the exceptional man, but of the common man. The influence of educated men must be used to reconstruct churches and societies upon the standards not of the wealthy, the learned, the genius and the well-to-do, but by the experiences of the poor, the workingman and the immigrant. The standard in all religious and ethical institutions which profess to represent the community is today graded up to the professional and exceptional. The reconstruction necessary is to grade down so that the appeal shall be to the poor and struggling man whose condition is in jeopardy, and whose status in the community is as yet undetermined. Institutions which appeal to the community as a whole must standardize their policy to the level of the margin of the community.

The reconstruction of the theological seminaries is necessary, if they are to fit men for service in communities. They render now a service which is so valuable that one cannot pass over them lightly. They train the candidate for the ministry by a process which develops and engages his piety. Other university courses either ignore his religious feeling, or if they develop it, do not harness it to the task of social improvement. The theological seminary lays the yoke of service upon the neck of prayer. This alone justifies its existence as a servant of the church in the community. However, the instruction in the seminary is rigidly grouped around courses in dead languages; which are jealous of instruction in a living tongue. The history of discarded doctrines and of discredited teachers is minutely taught through months, to the exclusion of courses upon modern, living people, whose religious experience is rich and striking. The purpose of seminary instruction is personal culture instead of efficiency. It is the theory of the teachers wherein they disagree with all other professional teachers, that "We do not make preachers: the Lord makes them." They try therefore to impart culture and personal distinction.

The seminaries need first of all flexibility of courses. The whole traditional schedule should be made elective. The demands of the time would then have free course in the seminary, and would rearrange the instruction according to actual present need. The cultivation of practical piety should receive more attention. The social life of the students, in close association with their professors and under religious stimuli, should be made a more powerful force than it usually is, in creating a common ideal of service to which the seminary should commit itself. Above all, the seminary of theology should teach sociology and economics, as a religious interpretation. Students should after a year's class-room work be made to investigate and report upon actual conditions, should be delegated to study social movements, report upon them, and to lead in discussing them. They should be trained in the use of statistics, in graphic display of conditions, and in the use of public reports. In the senior year they should be employed definitely in practical work for populations, under instructors. After graduation the young minister should, more generally than now, be employed as an assistant to an older minister, in a large organization.