“What is the difference between a state university and an ordinary
university?”
A rather silly question, perhaps; but the answer that came back,
lightning-like, gave me the jolt of my life, and incidentally picked
out in my mind the pattern for the community church. Here is the
occasion and what took place:
A reception for the distinguished regents of the University of
Wisconsin at the home of the president. In due time I found myself
approaching that awful reception line, terrifying, indeed, to me, a
new-comer. Suddenly I became aware that I was shaking hands with the
president, whose newness to the job of presiding over a university had
not entirely worn off.
It was up to me to say something, and so, after the manner of a
pedagogue, I blurted out a question:
“Mr. President, will you tell me the difference between a state
university and an ordinary university?”
President Van Hise didn’t hesitate an instant with his answer.
“I cannot speak for all state universities,” said he, “but this
university is run not for the students who happen to be here, but for
the persons who may never see the university--even to the last man,
woman, and child in the last community of the State.”
I had become unconscious of the reception line, for I was startled
with an idea foreign to my bringing up, and I must make sure that I
perfectly understood.
“Mr. President,” I interrupted, “do you mean to say that the
University of Wisconsin is not proud of turning out highly developed
personalities?”
“Only as carriers,” President Van Hise quickly replied, in his
characteristic jerky manner; “carriers of ideas and attitudes even to
the isolated community and to the unpromising man. The students who are
here are here, as it were, by accident. But the university is run for
Wisconsin’s people at work.”
I passed on down the line, and eventually out into a world strange to
me, where being a “carrier” of intellectual goods to the “isolated
community” and to the “last man” was an academic commonplace.
Fourteen years of that day-by-day commonplace, however, never rubbed
off the beauty of its bloom for me; for here was a university running
at least neck and neck with church Christians in love for,--or duty
to, if you prefer it so,--the Gospel’s whomsoever.
Having seen with my own eyes these last communities of a State
quickened into intellectual fervor through the devotion of university
men and women, do you think I do not know what would happen to the
spiritual life of these out-of-the-way communities if the supreme love
of devoted church men and women were brought to bear upon them?
_A Forecast Founded on Fact_
I will venture to forecast some of the things that would happen.
Every rural community would have a community church--a church for the
whomsoever, even to the last man, woman, and child in that community.
If topographically possible, every such church community would stretch
the bounds of its parish to include a thousand souls all told. In
communities of two thousand souls, there would be two churches--two
only, and both community churches. In communities of three thousand
souls, there would be three community churches, and three churches
only, every church, a community church; and no more churches than one
to one thousand of the community population; for it takes one thousand
of the population to maintain an effectual modern church; and every
church is to be a Christian community church as a safeguard against
paganism. But why am I so foolish as to foretell what would happen when
I can tell what is happening?
There are to-day, we are told by those who keep informed on the
matter, a thousand community churches in the United States, of which
the greater part are in rural territory. In fact, it is reported that
new community churches are being organized at the rate, at present,
of six a month. To say that there is a community church movement
well-started is no exaggeration. Some States such as Massachusetts,
Vermont, Connecticut, Ohio, California, Colorado, Iowa, Illinois, are
outstanding in the movement.
Of course, the community church is not yet standardized, but it is
shaping up. To affirm that there are three types, as some say, or five,
as others put it, is more or less arbitrary. Still, for the sake of
the man who understands better by types, I may say that some community
churches like to be known as having arrived at the community ideal by
“federation” of two or more denominational churches, the new church
preserving connection with a national church body.
Other community churches pride themselves on being “union” churches,
each having originated from the organic union of two or more churches,
or having been established as a “union” church in a community
possessing no church, but containing families of various denominational
connections in the past. The union church once formed usually stands
alone, without any denominational affiliation.
Then there is the regular “denominational” church, which either
just happens to be or has come purposely to be the only church in
the community; and which makes the boast of existing for the whole
community rather than for its particular denominational group.
And there are other varieties, which could indeed be dignified into
types, if we were pushed to it. The important thing, however, is that
out of a general unrest and dissatisfaction with churches that aim
to keep breeding up within themselves a highly pedigreed group of
personalities which possess decidedly exclusive, if not aristocratic,
characteristics, have arisen overnight, as it were, churches which
admit to the inner circle all the pedigrees and aim at the democratic
ideal of acting in the realm of religion for the last man, woman, and
child in the community.
_Churches for the Whomsoever_
Here we have before our very eyes, then, a kind of a church which is
run, as President Van Hise said his university was run, not for a
select few within its walls, but for the whomsoever within its own
territory; a church that views every single member as a “carrier” of
the goods of life to the last man, rather than as a precious mechanism
in which should be lodged all the mysteries of a peculiar cult.
Look over some of the stories of these churches which are confessedly
trying to find their way to a new expression of social religion
designed to prevent the wastes of competitive Christianity.
Here are the high points in an Idaho community church: Rural, in a town
of 600 souls. Presbyterian by connection, but with members formerly
of sixteen different denominations. Membership, 400. Plant worth
$50,000, with eighteen separate class-rooms for Sunday-school use.
A community house, with gymnasium. Rest room for women and girls. A
week-day church school using one hour a week of school time. In summer,
a daily vacation Bible school. A Boy Scout troop. A Campfire Girls’
organization. Potato growers and fruit men freely using the community
hall. High moral standards reflecting the unity of the people.
Take another community church of farmers in Iowa, in the open
country: An architecturally commanding building, providing, like
a well-organized school-house, many separate rooms for religious
instruction. The church has deliberately packed into its conception
of “community church” the idea that, assuming Christianity to have
contact with every phase of living, the church has responsibility
for providing the auspices under which all social activities of the
community take place. What more natural, then, than that the Fourth
of July celebration should be around the most beautiful spot in the
community, the church? Farmers’ Institute in the church? Young people
having a place for good times at the church? A church committee looking
after the matter of bringing good families on to farms that are for
sale or rent in the community?
Take a certain community church in Indiana. Here is the story of an
honest struggle on the part of four church pedigrees to burn their
bridges behind them, and, pooling their resources, to start in anew.
The peculiar traditions of each cult, however, cling desperately to
each group, until, after trying in vain to carry these psychological
contradictions along in an artificial unity, in a moment of supreme
devotion to the good of their community, they strip off their
trade-marks, forget their shibboleths, and step forward into religious
freedom.
The community-church movement is not going to create, I surmise, new
sects, leaving a residuum of several more denominations. Rather it
is a real step towards the organic union of kindred church bodies on
the one hand, and so a reduction of sects; and on the other hand, a
step towards democratizing every church and making it a real community
church.
_The Rural Dilemma and the Way Out_
It will require only another thousand of these brave, venturesome
community churches to turn every select-bodied denomination to looking
itself over. This self-criticism will lead the great Protestant church
bodies, let us hope, to a church conscience in regard to destructive
church competition. Then it will be an easy step to coming to terms
with one another in any locality, so as to give the community a chance
to have a community church.
The community church, if we can have any faith in mankind, is sure
to come along strong. If high officials become obstructionists, they
will be swept away; for the people, when they once clearly see, will
have their way in churches and religion as in the long run they do in
government and politics.
The sooner the great Protestant bodies confess their sins of
competition and put their houses in order, the sooner the new day will
come for the remote community and the last man.
Some of us know what it is to be a devotee of a great church sect. The
absolute rightness of our cult has been no more questionable than our
own existence. When our sect was in parallel columns with any other
religious sect, we did not, could not yield right of way.
But when we are all consciously confronted with the problem of
working out the religious life of 30,000,000 of isolated farm people,
we wake up to the fact that we occupy a position where cult pride,
cult individualism, and cult exclusiveness break down. Then we find
ourselves in a dilemma; we must leave the farmers to rot, a thing which
is unquestionably abhorrent to our cult; or we must modify our cult, a
thing which on the surface seems a sacrilege to do.
But there is a way out of every dilemma; generally, however at the cost
of a bit of human pride. The community church shows the various noble
church cults one way out of the rural church dilemma.
Read these bold words from a group of fifty young Methodist rural
workers penned to bishops:
“To the Bishops of the Methodist Episcopal Church: We the undersigned
members of the Methodist Episcopal Church appeal to you to give
prayerful consideration to the following suggestions:
1. That the bishops, district superintendents, and other administrative
officers of our denomination cordially coöperate with the leaders
of other denominations in an effort to so organize rural church
geographical units that not more than one Protestant church to every
one thousand population shall prevail as a standard.
2. That service to the community rather than to the denomination be the
basis on which ministers shall be trained, appointed, and promoted.
3. That the Methodist Episcopal Church take the lead in the
give-and-take method with other denominations, even to the extent
of encouraging the discontinuance of small, struggling, competing
Methodist churches in the interest of rural Christian service to the
communities involved.
4. That zeal for service to the entire community and a sympathetic
consideration for those whose background and training are non-Methodist
shall characterize the efforts of the Methodist Episcopal Church
wherever it alone occupies a rural field.
5. That the conference membership of a Methodist Episcopal minister
shall not be jeopardized by appointment as pastor of a federated or
undenominational church where such a church is required for the largest
service to the community.”
Theological students and college students are not to be outdone by
their elders in bravery. Read the following document for circulation
among the officials of the various church bodies--a document which
sounds like the “first call” for the rural community church:
“We the rural college student delegates at the American Country
Life Association Student Conference believe that the minister who
serves in a church which has no right to exist loses respect for
his profession and can not do outstanding work; we believe that our
denominational boards which appropriate money we give to keep churches
going in overchurched communities and which send leadership into such
communities are only making people feel that the ideals of Christianity
are no higher than those of pagan religions. We would apply the
principles and teachings of Jesus Christ. Therefore we recommend:
1. That students preparing to enter the rural ministry refuse to serve
charges in overchurched communities.
2. That we, as rural students, do all in our power in our communities
and in places of leadership that we may attain to prevent
denominational church boards from pouring money and leadership into
communities, which is to be used to perpetuate denominational strife
that is destroying the religious life of our communities.
3. That we pledge ourselves to endeavor to substitute the principles
and teachings of Jesus Christ for narrow denominational creeds and
doctrines. In view of this, we shall try to obtain an atmosphere and
physical equipment of rural churches, as well as church services
themselves, that shall be designed to meet the physical, social,
mental, and spiritual needs of the people who worship there, regardless
of their denominations.”
The press carries the story that down in Georgia five hundred farmers
last season dedicated an acre of land apiece, with all it grew, to the
Lord. These pieces of land are spoken of generally in Georgia as the
“Lord’s Acres,” and the “Lord’s Acre Plan” is hailed as a hundred per
cent. way to finance the country church.
The story goes on to say:
“Farmers in the South are firmly convinced that the Lord’s Acre yields
better crops than surrounding land, and that the entire farm of the one
giving the acre is more productive than those of his neighbors.”
_The Community Church as a Democracy_
The community church strikes me as a Lord’s Acre in rural Christendom
bearing a crop dedicated to God. And, if I read the returns aright,
the comparative yield justifies the belief. It is a church of the
people--a democracy in very truth. Any subtle influence that would tend
to wash in upon this democracy and wear it down to a dominating set of
people or to a group of negligible folk or to a loose aggregation of
nondescripts must be walled off with reinforced concrete.
A single type of religious temperament will not govern the range and
character of the community church. A constant sort of ideals that
appeals only to the seraphic souls or to other minds only in moments
of exalted pitch will, by a natural process of elimination, soon
reduce the church to a temperamental sect. No, the church is made up
of all temperaments: the matter-of-fact, active, and practical; the
poetic, sentimental, imaginative; the strenuous; the easy-going; the
enthusiastic; the petty; the anxious; the generous, self-denying; the
jolly, optimistic; the gloomy, conservative; the militant, crusading;
the important; the retiring. Their interests, too--the interests of the
whole church are as broad and various as human nature.
A cross-section of Christianity will reveal a ten-thousand fold
variegation of human streak and human color wherever religion has
filtered into actual life. This meeting-ground of all the higher
interests of the community will, therefore, be home for each interest.
As no single type of temperament should repulse the others and shrink
the church, so no single activity of the church should monopolize
the focus of attention. The mission interest, the Bible interest,
the educational interest, the interests social, musical, ceremonial,
disciplinary, the evangelistic interest, the civic and industrial
interest, the financial interest, the idealistic interest, both
personal and social--all these and the rest will have good footing in
the community church.
A church which should undertake to be a democracy in fact would find
that there is only one way of “maintaining interest” enough actually to
keep bringing the people together. This way is sounding God’s summons
to keep going the redemption of its community at every point. The
summons to definite undertakings to improve community life is like the
summons to a pioneer homesteader to make a home fit for his family. He
gears his hands to ax and saw, to plow and hammer, and he knows that
he can change the wilderness.
Besides stereotyped church procedure, a steady look at living
conditions in the community, with the determined expectation of
changing these conditions for the better; a look for the moral clues
to whole wretched situations; a look to disentangle from the chaotic
mass single, great, unmistakeable moral issues--these steady looks,
under God’s summons, must be given anew in every generation to the
kaleidoscopic facts of human life.
The church that shall go into the business of becoming self-conscious
and of realizing its democracy will hear God’s summons to community
redemption and begin to re-scale the map of church importance and
usefulness in the community on heroic lines.
* * * * *
Transcriber’s note
Minor punctuation errors have been changed without notice.
Inconsistencies in hyphenation have been standardized where appropriate.
Other spelling has also been retained as originally published except
for the corrections below.
Page 127: “pinked out in my mind the” “picked out in my mind the”
Page 144: “which appopriate money we” “which appropriate money we”