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.
The country church should minister to country people in some effective
gathering of all the countryside. A most fruitful method now in use is a
corn judging contest for the boys.
In the Middle West the Corn Clubs for boys have had an extraordinary
value, and in the South, also, the Farmer's Co-operative Demonstration
Work has made use of the boys in the country community for demonstrating
progressive methods on the farm. Thanksgiving Day can be prepared for in
the preceding spring, and the boys and girls who have managed a garden,
or half acre, through the summer can make their showing at that time.
Such a competitive showing in the country, in the production of the
staple crop, is sure to bring together the whole countryside.
The local history of the country community is a fruitful source of
recreation. Farmers look to the past, and even the new people in the
country are keen to hear the story of the old settlers and of the early
pioneers. Nothing is of greater value in developing and refreshing
country life than to enrich it by celebrating its early history.
Recreation is essential to the moral life of any people. It is the
constructive method of making individuals into good citizens. Especially
valuable is it as a means of educating the young people and the working
people of the community. The craving for this social training and
ethical experience drives many out of the country community. Conversely,
training in social morality is to be undertaken especially by the
church, which possesses the conscience of the country community. This
training is expressed in the one phrase; the promotion of recreation.
XIV
COMMON WORSHIP
The worship of God is an expression of the consciousness of kind. "This
consciousness is a social and a socializing force, sometimes exceedingly
delicate and subtle in its action; sometimes turbulent and all-powerful.
Assuming endlessly varied modes of prejudice and of prepossession, of
liking and disliking, it tends always to reconstruct and dominate every
mode of association and every social grouping."[35] This description by
Professor Giddings is so near to a description of worship, that it is
startling.
Of all human acts of the conscientious man worship is the most highly
symbolic. They who worship are alike, and in their likeness are unlike
to others. It is an expression of their awareness of resemblance and of
difference. The definitions of consciousness of kind, as a sociological
process, go a long way to explain without further comment, both the
strength and the weakness of the churches in America.
The churches have to struggle with a narrow and small social horizon.
Few people are so conscious of their kinship with all others in their
community that they desire those others to worship with them. The sense
of unlikeness to others is, unfortunately, as strong in their feelings
as the sense of likeness unto their own. In the American community with
many newcomers, and some foreigners, this sense of unlikeness is
natural. It is not to be wondered that men should think themselves more
like unto their old neighbors than unto the new. It is not surprising
that with new economic processes men should ignore their unity with
those who co-operate with them in getting a living, and should be
conscious of their unity with those whose living comes in the same form.
As a result, we have working men's churches and "rich men's clubs,"
"college churches," "student pastors," churches which minister to old
families, and new chapels built by tenant farmers. But these phases of
worship are peculiar to the times of transition in which we live. The
immaturity of our economic processes, and the greater immaturity of our
economic knowledge, explain the failure of worshiping people to assemble
by communities; but the process which assembles men of kindred mind to
worship together now is capable of bringing men together in larger
wholes.
The spirit of federation is in the air. The longing for religious unity
is a response to the stimuli of common experience in the same locality.
Men who meet throughout the week, if they worship at all, discover a
desire to worship together. The coming of great occasions and the
celebrations of anniversaries, train them in some common assemblies. I
remember how the tidings of the death of President McKinley brought
together all the people of the community in an act of worship. Their
response to a profound sense of danger was a community response, and the
church which was prompt to open its doors, found men of all faiths
within.
At a recent meeting of the National Body of one of the greatest
Protestant churches, proceedings were halted by the moderator, who read
a telegram announcing the friendly action of another religious body.
This action looked toward union of the two denominations. It was a
response to overtures from the body there in session. Instantly the
whole assembly sprang up, applauding and cheering, and led by a clear,
musical voice, broke out in a hymn. That hymn is profoundly sociological
in its language, and its use is increasing among Christian people. It
expresses that worship which is a consciousness of kind. Its words are
Blest be the tie that binds
Our hearts in Christian love:
The fellowship of kindred minds
Is like to that above.
Before our Father's throne
We pour our ardent prayers;
Our fears, our hopes, our aims, are one,
Our comforts and our cares.
We share our mutual woes,
Our mutual burdens bear,
And often for each other flows
The sympathizing tear.
When we asunder part,
It gives us inward pain;
But we shall still be joined in heart,
And hope to meet again.
It would be hard to find a member of a Protestant church in America,
among the older denominations, who does not know these words, and is not
accustomed to use them in response to the stimuli of kinship with other
Protestant Christians.
The consciousness of kind is an awareness of differences and
resemblances. It is a finding of one's self among those to whom one is
like, and an aversion to those unto whom one is not like. Worship is an
expression of this common likeness. It is an enjoyment of fellowship.
The experience of worship is impossible in an atmosphere of difference.
This is a reason for the cleavage of denominations, and the splitting of
congregations. Without this separating, men could not enjoy the uniting,
and without the aversion, men could not taste the sweets of fellowship.
This brings us very near to the sacred experiences in which men find
God. A very early chapter in the Bible describes God as the "Friend" of
a man. In the succeeding pages he becomes the King, the Priest, the
Prophet, and the Father of men. In every one of them the mind of the
worshiper has expressed a profound sense, that God is found by the soul
in society. Herbert Spencer has insisted that all religion is ancestor
worship, that is, it grows out of the family group.
Simmel teaches that religion is the resultant of the reactions of the
individual with his group fellows, and with the group as a whole.
Christian folk are accustomed to express this by calling one another
"brothers" and "sisters," meaning clearly that religion is a social
experience.
This is not the place for extended biblical interpretation, but I am
convinced that the whole course of scripture will testify to this, that
in the peaceful, continuing, social unities men have found God, and in
the differences, in their group conflicts, in their wars, and in the
oppositions to their enemies, there has been found no religious
experience. That is, such conflict has intensified unity, and the
resulting unity has been ever richer in religion: but the thoughts for
God have come forth clothed always in terms and titles of fellowship,
unity and kinship.
In country communities this principle explains the divisions and the
unities of religious life. In many towns, the Presbyterian church, for
instance, is the church of the old settler and the earlier farmers. A
new denomination has come in with the tenants and the invaders. That is,
men have found it impossible to worship in a constant experience of
difference. It is true that their difference is an element in their
religion, because the consciousness of difference is an element in the
consciousness of kind.
In the Southern States, the white slave-holders worshiped, before the
war, in the same congregations with their negro slaves. They were
conscious of the plantation group, and of the economic unity with their
work-people. When emancipation came and the slaves were made free, they
must needs worship apart; and today, throughout the whole South, the
negro churches have been erected to express the consciousness of kind,
both on the part of the white and of the black.
If this argument has force, it goes to prove that religion is, in a
small community, the strongest organizing force. The seeking after God
requires as a vehicle the consciousness of likeness and difference. It
can only proceed along those lines.
The earnest desire of many common folk to know God is a working force,
which follows the cleavage of social classification. The churches become
expressions of social forms. In the country particularly, where life is
simpler and changes are slower, the church becomes an almost infallible
index of the social condition of the people.
The duty, then, of the religious worker, and the task of the prophet and
the seer, is to enlarge the consciousness of kind. Worship is to be
placed on a larger plane. Americans must be taught to see their unity
with immigrants. Owners of land must be made to recognize that they are
one with their tenants. The employer must be shown that his alliances
are with those who help him to get his living. At once, when this task
is put before us, we see the futility of the ideals of our time. Church
workers and other teachers have played up before the eyes of the people
those ideals which separate men into artificial classes. The
consciousness of kind has been a consciousness of money and
consciousness of belonging to old families, or a consciousness of the
ideals of higher education. A great many American families live in the
ideal of sending their boys and girls to college. This leads them to
feel a difference between themselves and the larger number of people who
do not care for higher education, and who discover no energies in
themselves that move on the path of learning. The result is that their
worship is narrow; churches become culture clubs: the preachers are
exponents of literature: the service of worship is a liturgy of esthetic
pleasure.
The true consciousness of kind must be economic and social. There is no
escape from this for religious people. They must go deep down to the
unities with men who co-operate with them in getting a living. The
Pittsburgh mill owner has no other unity by which he can find himself at
one with his foreign born mill-hand, than the fact that he and the
mill-hand are fellow workers in the mill.
What other bond of union is there between the farm landlord and the farm
tenant? They have no common idealism. The one reads books, the other
does not. The one sends his son to college, the other sends his into the
stable and the field. The one is enjoying a life of leisure and his
hands are clean; the other sweats, saves, and produces, in soiled
clothing, and with hard, coarse hands. They have only one basis of
unity, namely, that they co-operate in tilling the soil, and in the
producing of food and raw materials. The teacher, or preacher, who
attempts in this case to escape the economic unity, will find no other.
The trouble with most of the ideals which express themselves in
diversified worship, is that they are peculiar to the life of leisure,
they are a part of "the leisure class standard." Many teachers and
preachers reiterate similar demands which can only be responded to by
people who do not have to work.
From this leisure class standard our ideals must be changed to the
standard of work, and the man who has vision is he who shall see the
economic, the industrial unities, and who with compelling voice, will
call men together to worship in a new consciousness of kind.
Ministers in the country are feeling this very deeply. The pastor who
ministers to a whole community, boasts of it. He realizes he is serving
a true social unit. This is the joy of many country churches which might
be named, and the lack of it is the blight of many other country
communities. It must be clearly born in mind, however, that the church
can not organize a unity that is apart from the life of men. Religion
is the expression of social realities. There can be no "federation" of
those who are not conscious of their likeness and of their resemblances.
This means that the religious teaching of days to come must be a
teaching of the real unities of mankind. For in these true bonds of
union men are brought together. The efforts to assemble them in
artificial bonds, however ideal, will be futile.
FOOTNOTE:
[Footnote 35: "Descriptive and Historical Sociology," by Prof. Franklin
H. Giddings, p. 275.]
SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY
BOOKS
The Conservation of Natural Resources in the United States,
Chas. R. Van Hise, The Macmillan Co.
The Rural Life Problem of the United States,
Sir Horace Plunkett, The Macmillan Co.
Principles of Rural Economics,
Thomas Nixon Carver, Ginn and Company
The Country Life Movement in the United States,
L. H. Bailey, The Macmillan Co.
Ireland in the New Century,
Sir Horace Plunkett, E. P. Dutton
The American Rural School,
Harold W. Foght, The Macmillan Co.
The Country Town. A Study of Rural Evolution,
Wilbert L. Anderson, The Baker & Taylor Co.
Descriptive and Historical Sociology,
Franklin H. Giddings, The Macmillan Co.
Rural Denmark and Its Lessons,
H. Rider Haggard, Longmans, Green & Co.
Quaker Hill, A Sociological Study,
Warren H. Wilson, Privately printed
Youth,
G. Stanley Hall, D. Appleton & Co.
The Presbyterian Church in the United States,
Robert E. Thompson, Chas. Scribner's Sons
Chapters in Rural Progress,
Kenyon L. Butterfield, The University of Chicago Press
The Country Church and the Rural Problem,
Kenyon L. Butterfield, The University of Chicago Press
The Story of John Frederick Oberlin,
Augustus Field Beard, The Pilgrim Press
The Church of the Open Country,
Warren H. Wilson, Missionary Education Movement
The Day of the Country Church,
J. O. Ashenhurst, Funk & Wagnalls Co.
The Distribution of Wealth,
John Bates Clark, The MacMillan Co.
ARTICLES REFERRED TO IN THE TEXT
The American Journal of Sociology, March, 1911,
Statement by John L. Gillin.
The American Journal of Sociology, March, 1911,
The Drift of the City in Relation to the Rural Problem,
John M. Gillette.
Modern Methods in the Country Church,
Matthew B. McNutt, Missionary Education Movement
A Method of Making a Social Survey in a Rural Community,
C. J. Galpin, University of Wisconsin
Circular of information No. 29
Bulletins of International Institute of Agriculture,
Rome, Italy
The Political Science Quarterly, December, 1910,
The Agrarian Changes in the middle West,
J. B. Ross
INDEX
Abandoned country churches, 126
Absentee landlords, 32-39
Academy,--Old New England, 25
Addams, Jane, 191
Adult Bible Class, 134
Agee, Prof. Alva, 105
Agriculture, teaching of, 167
Amish, 74
Amusement, problem of, 84
Anabaptist, 72
Anderson, Wilbert L., 102
Anti-Saloon League, 183
Apples, marketing of, 175
Augustine, Saint, 82
Austerity, 57
Bailey, L. H., 50
"Bees", 203
Bellona, N. Y. 56
Boll weevil, 143
Bone, R. E., 86
Braddock, Rev. J. S., 58
Breach of contract, 174
Breadwinner, type, 113
Butterfield, Kenyon L., 137
Casselton, N. D., 42
Centralized school, 163
Chaffee, farm, 43
Chester County, Pa., 124
Chesterton, Gilbert K., 115
Christmas play, 203
Church, Budget, 138
Envelope system, 139
Financial system, 130
Records, 172
Clark, John Bates, 80, 111
College athletics, 193
Columbus, Christopher, 112
Community center, 104
Consciousness of kind, 208, 213
Corn Clubs, 206
Country Fair, promoted, 17
Country Life Commission, 171
Cranberry, N. J., church at, 27
Crete, Nebraska, 86
Danish Folk Schools, 52, 169
Delaware, produce exchanges, 154
Demonstration work, 206
Denmark, 51, 147
Desmoulin, 96
Diminishing returns, law of, 88, 110
Donation, system, 27
Dunkers, 58, 67
Du Page Church, 106
Eliot, Ex-President of Harvard, 137
Endowment of churches, 136
Exploitation of land, 32-33, 123, 124
Family group, 19
Shrinkage of, 124
Farm laborers, 22
Federation of churches, 135, 209
Foght, Harold W., 97, 160
Fourth of July celebration, 205
Galesburg, Ill., 201
Galpin, Prof. C. J., 94