What of the Church?
What country landscape is complete without the church spires? In this
spacious western region, in the heart of awe-inspiring natural scenery,
the church spires are guideposts to almost 50,000 people. This land is
new. It has been the changing frontier. Tremendous developments have been
in process. The country is in a transition stage between the stock-raising
past and the agricultural future. Population has increased rapidly;
population has been shifting. The whole background has been kaleidoscopic.
The Church has faced bewildering changes and growth. The burden of
increasing its service and equipment has been heavy; it has not been able
to "keep up" with the pace of civilization.
The story of early church growth in the cowboy country is one inspiring
loyalty since it eloquently traces the faithfulness of a few in a country
where God was easily forgotten. One of the first things to be read of
rough-and-ready Bannock, among the earliest mining towns on the Range, is
that church services were held there. The Church migrated with its
congregations. Missionaries from the East came through with the fur
trappers and preached the word of God. When the land began to be taken up
by settlers, impromptu meetings were held, and Sunday schools were started
in many places which had no ministers. Some of these points of worship
gradually developed into organized religious bodies so that at present
there are churches which have grown up with the country.
A Difficult Field
The Church in this frontier country has always faced great difficulties.
Chiefly, there is the vast area of it, with a scattered and transient
population. Homesteaders are a restless, uncertain, human quantity. Some
are engrossed in getting a start. Others move on as soon as they have
"proved up" on their claims. All are poor; there is always an economic
struggle going on. The old frontier spirit of "let have and let be"
survives from the cowboy days. This free and easy spirit says: "Boys
drinking?--well, boys have to have their good times. Streets weedy?--well,
they might be worse." The same spirit says: "No churches?--well, we're
just as well off and our money is better in the bank than paying for a
minister who never gets out and does an honest day's work."
"Good-bye, God, we're going to Wyoming," said a little Boston girl as the
family was starting west. This typifies what happened as people from the
East and Middle West moved out to the frontier. In the desperate struggle
for existence homesteaders had little time for Christian enterprise.
Because of the great distances and scattered population, adequate church
ministry has been difficult if not impossible. People had for so long
lived without a church that indifference developed. The longer they stayed
the less they took the church for granted. The older the section, one
finds to-day, the less likely it is to want church ministry. Newer
homesteaders, recently come from other parts of the country where the
church was more available, are more eager for church and Sunday school.
[Illustration: A VOICE IN THE WILDERNESS
The M. E. Church at Mosquero, Union County, N. M.]
Development and Distribution
The differences in religious development and psychology according to the
time of settlement are well illustrated by these counties. Generally
speaking, Beaverhead grew up before the Church had made much headway. It
is conservative. The general attitude is the wary one of "Let the Church
alone." Men class churches among those feminine luxuries with which a
real, red-blooded man has little to do. On the other hand, Union, the most
recently developed county of the four, still has a marked "church
consciousness." The majority of the people have not yet broken with the
habits and customs of the more closely settled and churched Middle West
from which they came. The other two counties combine these two conditions.
Part of Sheridan is like Union, a region newly homesteaded. Part of it is
like Beaverhead, old and settled with frontier habits. Hughes, on the
threshold of the West, retains the frontier sentiment of all the other
counties.
[Illustration: NO ROOM FOR BOTH
The Presbyterian Church at Melrose, Montana, and its next-door neighbor, a
deserted saloon.]
Church work has been going on in these counties since 1867, when
Protestant work was started at Bannock, in Beaverhead County. Churches
were organized in the other counties in succeeding decades. The first
Protestant church was organized in Hughes between 1870 and 1880, in
Sheridan and Union Counties between 1880 and 1890. In this comparatively
short time, some churches have gone under. Beaverhead has had nine
Protestant churches, of which six are now active. One church, located just
outside the border of the county in Melrose, a small hamlet, is included
in this report. Dillon, the county seat, has four churches, or one
Protestant church for about every 675 persons. Outside Dillon, the
habitable rural area of the county has two Protestant churches, or one
church for about every 1,800 square miles and for about every 2,300
persons. Roman Catholics have two organized churches in the county,
Mormons have one active and one inactive church, and there is one
Christian Science church.
[Illustration: COMMUNITY MAP OF SHERIDAN COUNTY, WYOMING]
[Illustration: MAP SHOWING CHURCHES AND PARISH BOUNDARIES OF SHERIDAN
COUNTY]
[Illustration: CHURCH AND COMMUNITY MAP OF BEAVERHEAD COUNTY]
[Illustration: MAP SHOWING CHURCHES AND PARISH BOUNDARIES OF UNION COUNTY,
NEW MEXICO]
[Illustration: COMMUNITY MAP OF UNION COUNTY, NEW MEXICO]
Sixteen Protestant churches have been organized in Hughes County, all but
one of which are now active. Pierre, the county seat, with six of the
churches, has a Protestant church for about every 535 people. Outside
Pierre and the section occupied by the Crow Creek Indian Reservation, the
rural area of the county has one Protestant church for about every
seventy-three square miles, and for every 300 persons. There are three
Catholic churches outside the Indian Reservation.
Sheridan County has had twenty-two Protestant churches, of which seventeen
are now active and two are inactive. The city of Sheridan has nine
Protestant churches, one church for about every 1,020 persons; outside
Sheridan, the habitable area of the county has one Protestant church for
about every 220 square miles, and for about every 1,130 persons. The
county has five Catholic churches, a Mormon, a Christian Science, and a
Theosophical organization.
The newest county of the four has the most churches. Thirty-nine
Protestant churches have been organized in Union County, thirty-one of
which are now active. Clayton, the county seat, has four churches, one for
about every 625 persons; outside Clayton, the rural area of the county has
one Protestant church for about every 280 square miles and for about every
525 persons. There are five organized Catholic churches.
The four counties now have a total of seventy active Protestant churches
representing eleven different denominations, but there is an acute need of
a more strategic distribution. Churches located in the city of Sheridan
will henceforth be referred to as "city" churches; churches located in the
towns of Dillon, Pierre and Clayton will be referred to as "town"
churches; those located in villages, a classification applying to all
centers with a population of 250 to 2,500, will be referred to as
"village" churches; and those located in hamlets of less than 250
population or the open country will be known as "country" churches.
Classified in this way, nine, or 13 per cent. of the total, are "city"
churches; thirteen, or 19 per cent., are "town" churches; fourteen, or 20
per cent., are "village" churches, and thirty-four, or 48 per cent., are
"country" churches. Other than Protestant churches will be discussed in a
separate chapter.
God's Houses
A live church organization should have a building of its own. It is hard,
indeed, to preach the reality of religion without a visible house of God.
Yet nearly one-third of the organizations have no buildings and must
depend on school houses, homes or depots. Some of these churches, located
in strategic places, acutely need buildings and equipment if they are to
hold their own in the future. For others, however, the possession of
buildings would be a tragedy, since they would thus become assured of a
permanency which is not justified. All the city and town churches have
buildings, as well as twelve of the fourteen village, and fifteen of the
thirty-four country, churches. In addition, two inactive organizations
have buildings which are available and are used to some extent.
[Illustration: EPISCOPAL CHURCH AND PARISH HOUSE
Beaverhead County, Montana.]
The majority of the buildings are of wood; fourteen are of brick, cement
or adobe. Unfortunately, the Range has no typical pioneer architecture of
its own. Most of the buildings are reminiscent of New England forbears.
Many of them look barren and unkempt. Standing forlorn upon the plains,
most of the open country churches are unrelieved by any sign of trees.
Little or no effort has been made to make them attractive. Thirty
buildings are lighted by electricity. Twenty-two churches are of the
usual one-room type, eleven have two-room buildings, four have three
rooms, three have five rooms, six have six rooms or more. A few possess
special facilities for social purposes. One town church has a parish
house. Nine have extra rooms and some special equipment, including three
gymnasiums. Stereopticon outfits have been installed in one city and in
two town churches. One other town church borrows a stereopticon once a
month from a public school, and one town church occasionally borrows the
county moving-picture machine.
A new kind of community house was built last summer by the Sheridan
Presbyterian Church. It is a summer camp on a mountain stream not far from
the Big Horn Mountains, about twenty miles south of Sheridan. The building
is used for kitchen, dining room, rest room and general headquarters. Each
family brings its own tent when using the camp. The purpose is to make it
a place for tired people, and especially for those who have no cars or
other means of taking an outing during some part of the hot weather. The
community idea expresses itself in a plan whereby those owning cars shall
sometimes transport a family that otherwise might have no outing.
Church property is valued at $592,323, and it is noteworthy that the
churches have acquired property of such value in so short a time. The fact
that church growth is a present-day phenomenon is illustrated by the two
splendid buildings erected since this survey was made, and the
preparations for a third which will cover an entire block. The highest
value of any city church is $70,000, of any town church $75,000, of any
village church $7,000 and of any country church, $4,000. Twenty-eight
churches have parsonages, their total valuation amounting to $61,300, or
an average value of $2,189.
About one-third of the churches carry some indebtedness on their property.
Twenty-five churches report a total debt of $57,695, of which amount
$28,500 was borrowed by six city churches, $21,700 by four town churches,
$2,905 by five village churches and $4,590 by eight country churches. The
money was spent for new buildings, new parsonages, repairs and, in one
case, for a garage to hold the preacher's Ford. Curiously enough, instead
of being a hardship, working to pay off a debt often brings church members
together into a unified working group. The interest paid ranges from 4 to
8 per cent.
Church Membership
Even more important than the material assets of the churches are their
human assets--their members. The total number enrolled in Protestant
churches in the four counties is 5,820. Active members number 3,956, or 68
per cent., while 1,013, or 17.4 per cent., are classed as inactive, i.e.,
they neither attend church services nor contribute to church support, and
851, or 14.6 per cent., are non-resident. The country and city churches
have the highest proportion of non-resident members--16.9 per cent. and
16.6 per cent., respectively; the town figure is next at 11.7 per cent.,
and the village percentage is 9.83. These people have moved, or else live
too far away to come to church services. In addition to the enrolled
membership, there are members of distant churches who have never
transferred to local churches. They are scattered through all these
counties, and their number is, of course, not known and cannot be
estimated. Some may have been asked to join local churches, but it is
certain that some have not, and that no one knows or seems to care if they
have been members of some church elsewhere. They may attend local churches
occasionally, but it is more likely that they do not. Some of them feel
like the little hard-working ranch lady who said, "I was a church member
out in Iowa, thirty-five years ago, but I've never done lifted by letter
and I've been here so long now, I guess I never will."
[Illustration: CHART I]
The Protestant church member who moves away is not followed up by his
church as a general thing. This is partly due to frequent ministerial
changes, partly to the lack of well-kept church records, and partly to
lack of interest. Of course, the fault is not only with the churches on
the Range; it is a shortcoming of the churches everywhere. Since, however,
a transient population is characteristic of this country, it would seem to
be a matter of prime importance for churches to keep track of the
movements of their members. This matter concerns not only local churches
and their denominations, but also calls for cooeperation among different
denominations.
[Illustration: CHART II]
Most of the churches are in the larger centers. Of the total resident
church membership nearly 43 per cent. belong to city churches, 28 per
cent. to town churches, 11 per cent. to village churches and only 15 per
cent. to country churches. As the center decreases in size, the more it
draws from the surrounding country. Thus, 93 per cent. of the total
resident families of city churches live in the city and 7 per cent. live
outside; 87 per cent. of the total resident families of town churches live
in the town and 13 per cent. live outside; 62 per cent. of the total
resident families belonging to village churches live in villages and 38
per cent. live outside.
Somehow the Church has failed to appeal to the men. A prominent man who
never came to church in one of the towns in the counties studied, said to
a minister: "Here is a hundred dollars. For God's sake, don't let the
church go down!" This man realized that the community needed the church,
but he chose to help from the outside. This is the prevailing attitude:
the men are not antagonistic, but they are indifferent. All the counties
have a higher proportion of men than of women in the population; each has
a higher proportion of women than men in the church membership.
Beaverhead, preponderant by 58.3 per cent. in males, has the lowest
proportion of adult men in the church membership, 23.8 per cent. Union has
the highest proportion of men, 32.7 per cent. For all the churches of the
four counties, 30.5 per cent. of all church members are males over
twenty-one, 8.6 per cent. are males under twenty-one, 47.5 per cent. are
females over twenty-one and 13.4 per cent. are females under twenty-one.
A larger proportion of young people are enrolled in the city and town
churches than in those of the village and open country. City and town
church memberships have 9 per cent. boys, and 14.36 per cent. girls.
Villages have 6.75 per cent. boys, and 12.26 per cent. girls. Open country
churches have 8.19 per cent. boys, and 9.26 per cent. girls. One reason
for the small number of young people is that many grew up without the
Church. The children now growing up have better church opportunities. The
hope of the Church for the future is to reach the children.
The small church prevails on the Range, the average active membership
being only about fifty-seven. For the various groups, the active
membership is as follows:
AVERAGE ACTIVE MEMBERSHIP
Country Village Town City Average
Beaverhead 8 6 81 49
Hughes 8 39 109 59
Sheridan 33 62 185 117
Union 16 33 66 24
The country churches have an average of eighteen, the village churches
thirty-five, the town churches ninety-one and the city churches 185
members each. Forty-nine of the seventy churches have fifty active members
or less, and thirty-six, or 51.4 per cent., of these have less than
twenty-five each. Twenty-one churches have each more than fifty active
members. Forty-four out of the forty-nine churches of less than fifty
members are either in villages or in the open country. All the churches of
more than 100 members are either town or city churches.
[Illustration: CHART III]
[Illustration: CHART IV]
It is an acknowledged fact that the size of membership has a good deal to
do with church efficiency; in a word, that the small church is a losing
proposition. Until the present, the small church on the Range has been a
necessity because of the small and scattered population. It is only the
larger centers that have been able to support good-sized churches. Even
with the coming of irrigation, this Western country will never be as
thickly populated as the East or Middle West. Nor can a fair comparison be
made between the churches in the larger centers in the Middle West and far
West. A different policy is likewise needed here because many of these
centers in the West are surrounded with large unchurched areas and on that
account their churches should be strategic centers for a radiating
religious work.
[Illustration: CHART V]
In the matter of gain or loss in membership, it is to be noted that,
during the last year, a little more than half the churches made a net gain
in membership, sixteen churches broke even on the year and seventeen
showed a net loss. Thus, 3 per cent. of all the churches remained
stationary, 24 per cent. lost in membership and 53 per cent. gained. Of
the churches with 50 or more members, 82 per cent. gained; of those with
less than 50 members only 33.3 per cent. gained.
Seven hundred and sixty-four new members were taken in during the year.
Forty per cent. of these were taken in by letter, the rest on confession
of faith. This gain by confession was about 13 per cent. of the previous
net active membership. Gain was distributed according to sex and age as
follows:
Adult male 31.0%
Adult female 42.4%
Boys 11.7%
Girls 14.9%