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

by Warren H. Wilson

The training of citizens for days to come demands exactly the qualities which are imparted on the play-ground. Morality is not taught and ethical culture is not imparted by precept, though precept and exhortation have their due place in the analysis of moral and spiritual matters, for the thoughtful. But the great number of people are not ethically thoughtful, and in the acquirement of righteousness all people are unconscious. The desired action in moral growth is universally spontaneous. The most sober and intellectual of men must be caught off his guard and must be lured into voluntary actions before any moral habits can be formed in him. Mere analysis of truth or self-examination makes no man good. But men become good by doing things first, and thinking of them afterward. They can be just as good if they never think about them, though thinking about ethical matters renders a service to the community as a whole.

It should be the duty, therefore, of the churches, who are acknowledged before the whole community as repositories of the conscience of men, to promote public recreation. Where necessary the church should even provide a play-ground. In Galesburg, Ill., fifteen churches are co-operating, through their men's societies, in a central council of forty members. This Council is made up in the form of four Committees of ten. Each Committee considers one great interest of the community. One of these interests is recreation. It is the duty of this Committee in winter to provide musical and literary entertainment and lectures. In the summer this Committee has secured the use of the Knox College recreation field, and employing a trained man, has opened it throughout the summer as a play-ground for all the children of the city.

The use of recreation for the building up of a community seems to involve expensive apparatus and sometimes does so. Mrs. Russell Sage at Sag Harbor, Long Island, has expended many thousands of dollars in the experiment. Interested in the children, of whom there are about eight hundred in the town, through the experience of giving them a Christmas tree, she determined to devote to their use a piece of land on the borders of the village, formerly used as a fair ground. This work is to have local value for the children of this community, and has been used as a demonstration center of the efficiency of recreation as a moral discipline among the young.

But most communities have not so much money to spend. The proposal of a play-ground or of a gymnasium is itself sufficient to condemn the doctrine of play. "We cannot afford it," settles the whole question. In the country expensive apparatus is not necessary; nor do the farmer's son and daughter require in recreation so much physical exercise. The gymnasium is an artificial and expensive machinery for inducing sweat, but the farmer needs no such artificial machine. The problem is purely one of play, not of exercise. For this purpose a careful study of the community, and of its tendencies and inclinations, is necessary. The great essential of recreation in the country is the opportunity to meet and to talk. Therefore the social life of gatherings in the church, and in the schoolhouse, no matter what their program, provided it be innocent, is valuable. Farmers will attend an auction, and go a long way to a horse-race, or gather at a fair, without any intention of buying or selling. The fundamental service rendered by the county fair and the auction is an opportunity afforded to converse. This exercise of the tongue is far more important in rural recreation than the exercise of the biceps. But country people cannot talk without an occasion which unlocks their tongues. They must not be directly solicited to converse or they are silent. If the occasion is provided and is made to be sufficiently plausible its greatest success will be in conversation.

In almost every country community, therefore, there should be revival, in various forms, of the old "Bees," which had so much of a place in the former economy. If there is a widow who has no one to cut her wood, the men of the country church should assemble to do it. If there is a household whose bread winner and husbandman has died at the time of planting corn, let the men of the community gather at an appointed day and till the ground for the family, whose grief is greater at that moment than their need. Let the women of the community assemble at noon to provide an abundant repast. This was recently done by a countryside, at the instigation of the minister, and the effect of it was lasting in its values as well as intense in the joy of the day's work. It seems, in view of the need of recreation, that no other quality is so important in the country community as a lively leader. Resourceful, energetic and fertile men in the rural ministry can accomplish vastly more than conventional, orderly and proper men.

The church in which I began my ministry used to have a play every Christmas. We built out the pulpit platform with boards, we hung it around with curtains, giving dressing-room space, and we placed lanterns in front for foot-lights. The first play we gave made us anxious, for the neighborhood was an old Quaker settlement; but we found that the Quakers enjoyed the play immensely and were the best actors. We made it a genuine expression of the Christmas spirit. We abolished the old "speaking pieces." Our little stage offered the young people team work, instead of individual elocution. The rehearsals filled a whole month with happy and valuable meetings. Everybody co-operated in the labor necessary to prepare the decorations and to take them down, during Christmas week, and on the night of the play everybody was on hand, Catholic, Protestant and heathen.

The holidays of the passing year suggest the recreations of the country church. These should not necessarily be productive of sweat, but the country boy and girl do need the recreation of laughter and happy meeting and social liveliness. Farm work is lonely and monotonous. Such immorality as there is in the country has direct connection with the tedium and dullness of long hours out-doors, alone. The recreations of country life should be meetings for the celebration of great events of the year. Easter expresses ideas which are age-old among country people: it is both a pagan festival and a Christian anniversary. If Easter is developed in a celebration of song or procession, of sermon and of decoration, with full use of its symbolic value, it is sure to bring the whole countryside together, in an experience of the New Year rising from the grave of winter and of the divine Lord risen from the dead.

Most country communities have no such celebration. In very many the whole year passes without neighbors meeting for a common social experience. This is why people move to the city, because every city, great and small, has in the course of the year some events which bring all the people to the curbstone. Country life has few such times and therefore it is dull, because the richest experience of mankind is the experience of common social joy. The best recreation is acquaintance and conversation. The farmer's son spends many hours in silence. He wants someone to help him to talk, and to talk unto some purpose.

The Fourth of July is celebrated in Rock Creek, an Illinois community, by a "wild animal show." Instead of explosives, which are discouraged, the boys of the community bring together in small cages their animal pets. The boys are encouraged to make small carts for the transportation of their pets, and the crowning event of the day is the procession of these carts, in an open place, before the great dinner, at which the countryside sits down together.

Recreation in the country, above all, should revolve about something to eat. The farmer's business is to feed the world, and country people love, above all things, the social joy of eating. Farmers' wives are the best cooks and the country household perpetuates its culinary traditions. Especially does a permanent farm population enrich its household tradition with delicious recipes and beautiful customs of the table. Thanksgiving Day should be the great celebration of the round year in the country. What a comment upon the country community it is that so few communities in the country meet together, in response to the President's proclamation of thanksgiving, to express gratitude unto the bountiful Father of all.