Most of them are self-supporting. Sometimes the newly organized congregations get a little help from the United States at the start, but the great majority of native converts pay more for their religion and make greater sacrifices than the Christians of the United States. For example, thirteen out of twenty-seven churches in the Central Turkish mission are not only entirely self-supporting but contribute substantial aid to weaker churches in their neighbourhood. In the entire Turkish Empire last year the native churches paid five sixths of all the expenses of education, worship, and charity.
The board pays the salaries of the missionaries, but the effort is to bring the native churches to a condition of pecuniary independence for the reason that it stimulates their pride and their ambition; it gives them confidence and self-respect, which, as everybody knows, are the strongest elements in the formation of national as well as individual character. Notwithstanding the extension of the work, the amount of money contributed by the United States for the support of native churches has been growing smaller every year. Whereas the board contributed $54,585 to assist native churches twenty years ago, in 1910 it gave less than $20,000.
The most significant feature of the statistical reports of American missions in Turkey is the column which gives the contributions of the natives for the support of their churches. In 1910, the total was $119,987, an increase from $92,937 for the year 1903.
This is very remarkable, and means ten times as much as the same amount would mean in America, because of the poverty of the people and the fact that the earnings of the great mass of native Christians do not often exceed thirty or forty cents a day. This money is given voluntarily for the erection and support of houses of worship, for the salaries of their native pastors, and for the circulation of religious literature. It may safely be said that no Christian community in the world, unless it be the Roman Catholics of Ireland, contributes so large a portion of its income for religious purposes as the native Protestants of Turkey. Because of the liberality of the people in this respect the Protestant church in Turkey has been able to enjoy the ministration of educated pastors. This accounts also for the large attendance of natives upon the American schools, which derive a larger proportion of their income from tuition fees probably than any other schools of their class in the world. This is particularly true of the American colleges. No college these days pretends to live, and few could survive without, endowments, but the American colleges in Turkey are more dependent upon their tuition fees and less dependent upon endowments for support than any similar institutions in existence.
In making a comparison of the American and Turkish schools, Dr. Crawford, a veteran missionary teacher at Trebizond, said:
“Although the Department of Public Instruction at Constantinople is making noble efforts to improve the schools of Turkey, they still are limited in quantity and poor in quality. The Mohammedan schools are taught by priests, who are themselves, with few exceptions, illiterate. The pupils sit on the floor of a mosque swaying back and forth, studying about the three ‘R’s’—reading, writing and ’rithmetic—and the Koran, of course. They pay more attention to that than to anything else, and, indeed, some of the mullahs are so illiterate that they would not be able to read anything else. Of late the Turkish officials have begun to recognize the usefulness of Christian schools and not only tolerate them, but are introducing their methods to a degree into the mosque schools. With a liberal and intelligent minister of education there ought to be a decided improvement in the Turkish system of instruction, but there will be great difficulty in securing teachers. Of course, women teachers cannot be utilized and men who have education enough to qualify them to teach properly can get positions under the government or elsewhere that pay much better salaries than teaching school.
“The Greeks have excellent schools and their people show a craving for knowledge which is characteristic of the race. The Roman Catholics have French and Italian schools for the colonies of those nations under the instruction of Jesuits and Capuchin monks, and they are usually very good. But the lack of education throughout the Turkish Empire is deplorable, and if the American schools have done nothing else than stimulate a rivalry on the part of the other religious denominations and the government, the money that has been contributed to support them has been well invested.
“As a rule, both the Greek and the Armenian clergy are uneducated. Most of them are very little higher intellectually than the Turkish mullahs. Some of them can merely read the service, and no more. There is no inducement for educated men to go into the priesthood because the pay is so small; altogether too small to enable them to live decently and to give their families the ordinary comforts of life. Educated men cannot afford to become priests, and as education is not required in either the Greek or Armenian Churches, when a priest dies the congregation select one of their own number who happens to be able to read and make him their priest. A bishop of the Armenian Church in this vicinity recently resigned to accept a government office, and gave as his reason for doing so that his salary was not sufficient to support his family and to educate his children.
“Agricultural and industrial education is needed more than anything else in order to enable the people to get the best profit from their labour and to teach them to use modern labour-saving implements and methods.
“It is the policy of the missionaries to make the natives do everything for themselves so far as practicable, and native pastors relieve them of much of their labour except supervision. But at the same time the missionary must drive new stakes and plough new ground and plant new seeds all the time to extend his sphere of influence. And he travels about for this reason, holding religious services in the native languages and drawing believers together until he gets enough material to start a church. I know a man who preaches three times every Sunday in three different languages in different places to different congregations—Turkish, Armenian and Greek. And they have all kinds of schools to look after, from kindergartens to theological seminaries. The latter are especially important because they furnish pastors for the native churches. The faculties in the American colleges are nearly all natives, but the presidents, the deans, and the treasurers are always Americans, and the boards of trustees are mixed.”