The influence of such social training would itself reform seminary instruction. Thrust into a present-day curriculum, social science is a foreign and alien intruder; but its value would soon be demonstrated and other courses would be made over in new harmony with it. If some courses be dropped, even if whole chairs be abandoned, it is better than that the whole theological seminary be abandoned by students—which is the apparent fate hanging over certain seminaries! What has here been said is true of the schools of theology in all denominations, and applies alike to both the conservative and the liberal.
In conclusion, the writer believes that the church's future is with the self-respecting poor. Jesus and nearly every leader of a great religious movement was of the poor and labored with the poor. The sources of religion are those named in the Beatitudes: poverty, meekness, sorrow, hunger, ostracism; and those are all social experiences. The service of the church should be to these; and in serving the marginal people, whose life is composed of the Beatitudes, the church will serve all men.
FOOTNOTES:
[29] "The Distribution of Wealth," by John Bates Clark.
[30] Luke, 6:20 ff; 15:1 ff.
IX
NEWCOMERS IN THE COMMUNITY
One general cause is bringing new people into the average country community. The exploitation of land expresses the transition from the period of the land farmer to that of the scientific farmer or husbandman. The signs of this exploitation are the retirement of farmers from the land, the incoming of new owners in some numbers and of tenant farmers in a large degree, into the country community. The influence of the absentee landlord begins to be felt in communities in which the landowner was until 1890 the only type. In most of the older states immigration from foreign lands has not greatly affected the country community. In Wisconsin, Minnesota and other states of the Northwest substantial sections of the community are invaded by people of sturdy Germanic and Norse extraction. In New England the Poles, French, [Portuguese] and some Jews are settling in the country. But throughout the states of the Union as a whole the population, both the newcomers and older stock, are American.