Using the resources of the country church

Preface

The American people are just beginning to realize the need of the conservation of natural resources. There is evidence that the nation is slowly awakening to the necessity of a wiser use of natural wealth. The pressure of economic circumstances is emphasizing for the more thoughtful the importance of conservation. This idea of a better use of our natural resources is of the utmost social value. It augurs well for our future as a nation.

There is equal need of our taking heed of our moral resources. Men and women are more important than natural possessions. The greatest human wealth is morality. It is this which separates man from the animal and makes social life on the human plane possible. Morality represents a great social resource. It needs conservation, for upon its wise use depends human progress.

The country especially needs to conserve its moral resources. Its social problems do not attract the attention that urban probvi PREFACE

lems obtain. There is, therefore, often less careful use of moral opportunity. Moral sentiment is created, but not directed into social service. This brings serious social loss.

This book is a plea for greater conservation of the moral forces and opportunities to be found in the American small community. It is based upon the belief that social progress depends most upon moral statesmanship, the wise directing of the moral energy which, fortunately, is present in every community.

I wish to thank the editors of Rural Manhood for permission to make use of material contributed to that periodical.

Contents

Page

Preface v

Introduction 1

Introduction

The great social need of our time is the bringing of the religion of Jesus closer to the deep, concrete needs of men and women. This has always been the great social need, for men and women cannot live well together unless they root their lives in profound spiritual vitality. Sin is a human evil — not the fault of a period of time. Social ills are sins expressed in organized forms — personal selfishness showing its relationships in its social consequences. Neither the bad man nor the good man can live unto himself.

It is therefore the business of Christianity both to develop spiritual power and to put it to use. Full service is impossible if the Christian organization fails in either of these activities. Socially men must be made to feel as brothers and then they must be taught to act as such. There is no easier way socially than this path of

i

2 INTRODUCTION

brotherhood and unselfish service. Without the service the brotherhood soon ceases to seem real. Without the brotherhood the service soon loses its courage and high ideals. Without spiritual vitality both brotherhood and service fail to withstand the test of time.

This generation appears, however, to have a social distinction, even if the great social problems are merely the expressions of human selfishness. It is more difficult than in earlier times to see the personal evil in the social ill. The sin of the individual is lost in the great complexity of the situation. It is difficult to fix responsibility. Often we are uncertain as to what expresses bad judgment and what shows wicked intent.

The size, organization, and intricacy of our social problems f put upon us a greater moral test. We must be better than our fathers or our social life will be less Christian than theirs. Human progress requires, if we are to live a satisfactory social life, a superior morality. This it is the

INTRODUCTION 3

task of the Christian organizations to develop.

It is the temptation of some well-feeling people to think of service as something done at a distance. The great social contributions must always come, however, from those who see needs close at hand and have the good judgment and the true courage to meet such needs. Whether Christianity keeps close to human necessities or not depends upon the interpretation it receives; therefore, Christian teachers are under obligation to keep always in mind the great necessity of making spiritual opportunity appear closely related to the social service of the individual. We must not be selfish even in our spiritual experiences. Spiritual vitality depends upon the social impulse.

No organization needs to cultivate the habit of seeing possible service near at hand more than does the country church. The relation between it and the community in which it lives is so definite that it can never have excuse for failing to realize its com-

4 INTRODUCTION

munity responsibilities. It is of the community, in spite of itself, and its spiritual possibilities are found in its happy discovery of the largeness of its community ministration.

No service for the community can be greater than to conserve its moral forces by revealing and directing human idealism. This is the high calling of the community church. It puts to work the aspirations of the community and stimulates every good endeavor. It becomes spiritual in social service.

Rural progress depends most of all upon the conservation by the country church of its moral and spiritual resources. Men and women in village and rural life must first come under the influence of a practical idealism before other efforts to solve pressing social problems in the country and small towns can hope to have success. The church therefore that has found its social mission in a wise passion for concrete community service, has become to its place of ministration indeed the Church of God,

I

THE CHURCH OF THE SMALL COMMUNITY AND CITY DRIFT

The church of the small community is vitally interested in the problem of city drift. It is not to be expected that all of the youth of a small country place or village will remain at home. Many of the young men and women ought to go to the cities, for only in urban environment can they expect to find their deepest desires satisfied. On the other hand, it is often true that the city draws from the community individuals who could live a happier and healthier life in the country, were they well prepared to make the most of their rural opportunities. This movement of population from the small community to the city concerns the rural and village church profoundly. It often robs the church of its most promising leaders. It presents a problem that the church needs to study if it attempts to conserve the human resources of the small community.

Modern psychology proves the uselessness of attempting to understand adult conduct by mere study of adult motives and circumstances, for the adult brings to each decision an accumulation of past experiences largely determining his choices, and in this personal collection the happenings of childhood and early youth have the greatest significance. It is by no means necessary that the adult, as he faces a definite situation, and is influenced in his decision by motives born of childhood environment, should recognize the fact that he acts as he does because of the events of his early life.

In many cases there is no clear understanding of the significance of early impressions, but this fact in no sense lessens the importance of the true cause of the conduct. It is reasonable to assume that any social movement which has become pronounced enough to be clearly recognized as characteristic of a period of time and group of people, has behind it, acting as a source of motives, a collection of similar significant early impressions.

The movement of population toward urban centers, so strongly expressed in Europe and America at the present time, deserves study in the light of the modern teaching of psychology concerning the meaning of childhood experiences as determining adult conduct. It is everywhere admitted that this urban attraction of rural population is socially significant, and that its causes are many. It is even feared by many that it represents an unwholesome and dangerous tendency in modern life, and that it should be investigated for the purpose of discovering a reasonable check upon this drift to the cities.

No study of the mental causes behind this urban enticement can fail to discover the importance of the suggestions received by country children during their preparation for life. Suggestions influence the child profoundly, and, of course, not less in the country than in the city. In many cases the life of the rural child is penetrated more deeply by significant suggestions, because his life, since it is spent in a less complex environment, offers a smaller quantity of suggestions, or a greater uniformity of such influence. In any case, the suggestions that enter the mind of the rural child provide a basis for explaining later actions.

Some of the deepest impressions in any child's life are the results of parents' attitudes. The child can hardly fail to be moved by the feeling and opinion of his father and mother, and usually their feelings and opinions are repeatedly expressed. Especially with reference to their occupation and environment, rural parents are likely to have attitudes that are frankly and often expressed. Many a child brought up in the country is given again and again, even perhaps several times a day during the most impressionable years, suggestions born of rural discontent.

Every occupation provides reasons for discontent, but in the country any dissatisfaction with the conditions of the chief industry, farming, is likely to develop into discontent regarding the country itself, for the occupation and the environment are hardly to be distinguished. Indeed, in leaving the occupation of farming, it is usually necessary for such people also to leave the country towns. Not infrequently the parent expresses discontent regarding the conditions of life in the country, when the reason for his attitude is only one unhappy, perhaps temporary, condition in his occupation. Discontent seldom discriminates, and there is much to tempt the dissatisfied farmer to express his emotions in a general indictment against rural life.

It requires no argument to demonstrate that the child interprets his suggestions with a minimum of discrimination. Although negative suggestion at times operates, and the child takes the attitude opposite that of the parent, as a rule he assumes things to be as they are said to be. If the child, even after a number of years, feels the discontent of father or mother, or both, with reference to living in the country and respecting rural environment, it is to be expected that he will accumulate a mass of mental material which sooner or later is bound to provide motives for conduct.

In this connection, one needs to remember that all who live in the country are not there because they prefer the country to the town. They may have failed to find an opportunity to go to the city, or they may have lacked the courage to attempt a radically different life and occupation. In some cases urban-minded people do not have their urban cravings awakened until they have become so fixed in the country that economic heroism is required to pull up stakes and move to the city; and it so happens that one may be in the country but not of it, spreading discontent regarding rural conditions at every opportunity. Certainly such discontent cannot fail to suggest dissatisfaction to rural youth.

Rural education, of course, provides many opportunities for penetrating suggestions, and any one who intimately knows the schools of the country will admit that their suggestions are not always friendly to rural interests. The character of some studies makes it difficult for the teacher not to emphasize urban conditions. In the endeavor after the dramatic and the ideal, the teacher is likely to draw upon urban life, since urban life circumstances provide so much that surely will appeal to the country boy and girl.

It is fair to state that a beginning has been made in the effort to utilize country life possibilities in teaching material. But one usually finds in the ordinary text-book an unconscious tendency to emphasize the urban point of view and to accept it as the social standard. Many of the striking human experiences of modern life necessarily culminate amid urban conditions, even when caused largely by rural influences. The urban center is the passion spot, and affords more opportunity for the exploration of the dramatic.

The same fact is true of ideals. The teacher is often tempted to use urban illustrations in her effort to establish ideals of conduct. The spectacular character of moral struggle and ethical effort in the city makes urban life a source from which to draw interesting moral appeal. This bias in teaching is magnified not infrequently by the attitude of the teacher toward rural life, consciously or unconsciously. She — for of course the rural teacher is usually a woman — has often a mind filled with urban interests and a craving born of urban purposes, and she displays enthusiasm in sympathy with her deepest wishes. She may in this manner become an ambassador who represents the condition of her choice— urban life. When she is a teacher of skill, ambition, and progress, it is hardly strange that she expects to move on to a larger town, and finally, if fortunate, to a city; for upon such a career depends largely her progress in her profession — her increase in salary, her freedom, and her professional standing. The suggestion of the urban-minded teacher and the urban-inspired school systern are bound to provide effective suggestions that will later provide a basis for rural discontent.

It is because of such subtle suggestions that the child often first decides to try city life; and, even when the decisions are soon forgotten, a sort of passing childish whim, they leave a remnant of possible discontent which later in life may become an element in a complex sentiment of dissatisfaction. To value this rightly, one must remember how open the child is to suggestions, and how certain such influences are to last, and how constantly they may be received term after term from the teacher.

Rural youth obtain suggestions of enormous effect from the circumstances of their own personal careers. When the young man or woman has exhausted an economic environment that seems meager and monotonous because he or she is badly prepared by inefficient education to interpret it, there is but one thing that can be done in order to obtain relief: that is to move away. In the city, a like failure may mean a change of occupation. To change one's occupation in the country requires usually that one leave the country. Suggestions therefore that farming does not pay, or is too laborious and unprofitable, translated into effective action, bring about a removal from both industry and locality. The early experiences on the farm may leave a suggestion of unreasonable toil. Romantic youth cannot rest content with a vision of endless, lengthened hours of work and merely a living. Other opportunities provide a living also, and less toil. Parents have at times been responsible for this conception of farming, because they have insisted upon having their sons and daughters work unreasonably during vacation and after school. The parent who looks backward upon a generation more given to long toil than this, and uses his own earlier experiences as a standard, may the more easily commit this mistake and teach his children to hate the farm and rural life.

The adult of little imagination is likely to forget another source of experiences in youth that may suggest to the country boy attitudes that later provide a basis for discontent in regard to rural life. The boy on the farm finds at times that his holiday and vacation are encroached upon by needed labor. Weather and harvest conditions rob him of the pleasures that his village chum enjoys. Some definite plan for an outing, or some greatly desired day of sport has to be given up that the crop may not be injured.

Doubtless parents allow these disappointments to happen with little reason, and looking at the matter from an adult point of view, do not regard the boys' feelings as of serious significance; and yet, in the light of modern psychology, we know that such experiences may build up a very significant hostility to the rural environment that appears to be the cause of these agonizing disappointments. The cumulative effect of a few bitter experiences of this nature may be sufficient to turn the boy away from the country in his heart of hearts for all time. In such cases the first opportunity to leave the country for the town will be accepted gladly, as a way of escape from a life that is emotionally intolerable.

A visit to some communities is enough to explain the migration from these communities, for they disclose themselves as having lost their self-respect. You will hear it said in such places repeatedly that no young man of worth is to be expected to remain in the town. It is no place for one who wishes to make something of himself. There is no opportunity, because the town is dead. The social atmosphere is composed of community discouragement, fault-finding, and suspicion. There is no hope among the people, no spirit of progress. A depression which may sink even to despair drives the normal youth out of the town, with the idea that all farming communities are decadent and not to be endured.

This prevailing lack of community spirit and social courage must, in certain farming communities, act as a most persistent and powerful stimulus to constant migrations. The great need in such rural communities is the development of community confidence and self-respect, and any success in bringing in a happier social attitude lessens the movement of the population to the city.

The discouraged and discontented rural community lacks most of all wise, public-spirited leaders, for naturally its powerful persons have mostly moved away. There is little that works for the upbuilding of the community, for in the nature of things, influences that move public opinion and color social feeling require strong personalities for their source, and it is just such persons that have been driven away in despair.

People from outside the community are greatly handicapped in any help that they may try to give, for the natives are both sensitive and suspicious and easily given to jealousy. Such outside assistance, given with the best of purposes, is no doubt often trivial, tactless, and even foolish. He who attempts "rural uplift" with missionary motives and attitudes soon finds his task hopeless, as a result of the deep resentment felt by those whom he attempts to serve.

Nevertheless, in its last analysis, the problem of rural progress in a disheartened community must be solved mostly by conserving what leadership still remains, and by means of intelligent counsel and inspiration given by social and rural workers from outside the community who may become interested in it. So long as there is little constructive leadership at that point, the social condition encourages city drift.

The student of rural life is tempted to look too much to the country and too little to the city for the causes of rural migration. It is not easy to value properly the constant and impressive suggestions of urban opportunity furnished by the city. It is important to recognize that the prosperity of the city requires that it exploit itself in ways that bring people to the city to live as well as to trade. Better business is obtained by methods of advertising that naturally lead to more people.

Modern advertising is itself a supreme illustration of effective suggestion, and its development has been for the most part in the hands of urban interests. Such advertising has forced rural people to contrast their manner of life with urban conditions, often with the result of discontent. They are drawn to the city on special occasions by alluring city publicity manipulated with scientific skill by experts, and often return to their country homes dissatisfied because of false notions regarding the pleasures of the city. Of course this is more largely true of young people and they are more open to suggestion.

Recently a carnival, skilfully advertised and staged, was held in a western city. The most popular young woman in each of the neighboring small communities, elected by ballot, was invited to attend the gathering for several days as the guest of the carnival association. Listening to one of these young women telling her experiences in this, the most exciting week of her life, one wondered whether she could ever again feel content with the more normal joys of country life. Such an experience is merely one illustration of the countless forms that urban suggestion takes as it penetrates into the lives of rural people.

Spectacular success is largely dependent upon urban conditions of life, and such success obtains public attention. Even in the country, the successes talked about are likely to be those made possible by city life. These are given space in the magazines and daily papers edited and published in the cities, and so they naturally occupy the minds of rural readers of such periodicals.

The young man who feels the attraction of such enterprise, who wishes to have a part in big things, even if an insignificant part, who craves knowing big business at first hand, receives a suggestion that invites him cityward. When a community is itself represented by some former resident in some spectacular success, it is certain that many young men will question their future on the farm in that locality. Thus the human product of a rural community robs it of its personality resources, and the career of the man of fame may continue to act as a tradition long after his death, and still add to the rural migration.

It is not altogether clear what effect visitors in the summer from cities have upon rural people with reference to city drift. Although a matter of accident, perhaps, depending upon the character of the city people, and important only in a limited area of the country, summer visitors, nevertheless, must provide suggestions that occasionally operate powerfully upon some young people in the country in encouraging their going to the cities.

Certain facts in some of our New England country towns, where visitors from the city return summer after summer, appear to indicate that this condition does encourage young people in going to the city. Such a result might be expected in the light of motives that govern human conduct and the influence that luxury and leisure have in bringing about discontent in the minds of workers who look with envy upon the pleasures of others.

Perhaps this suggestion may be expected to operate more upon the girl than upon the boy, for the girl sees in the woman visitor from the city a candidate for matrimony who has advantages over her rural rival. It is not difficult to trace the influence of summer people upon the fashion of the women of the small country community, and we have every right to assume that deeper suggestions are stimulated than those that have to do with manners or dress.

II The Church Of The Small Community And Its Moral Advantages

It is encouraging to the social worker in the country to consider the moral resources provided by the rural environment, The minister of the small - community church does well to estimate the advantages that his field of service has over city life. Of course rural and urban society each has its moral superiorities. Each also has its peculiar disadvantages. The country worker often appears to make the mistake of not appreciating fully the advantages that are naturally furnished by the country environment.

Not to recognize clearly the resources provided for one's service is a fatal mistake. Success depends upon conditions. Moral service requires the utilization of the resources that make it possible. The more definite and discriminating the conception of moral resources on the part of the social worker, the more fortunate it becomes for those to whom he ministers.

It is necessary also that the worker in the country have a very precise idea of the end he wishes to accomplish. Although the object is bound to be individual and to vary in its concrete form with the person for whom one works, it is, nevertheless, possible to state it in general terms. Moral service attempts to use the opportunities provided by each person's instincts and desires, that a wholesome moral career may result. This effort to moralize the life requires that the personal and social resources be both known and used.

It is folly for any worker to regard any serious social problem as having little to do with morals. At the heart of every social difficulty is its moral cause. It is equally true that a disregard of the moral resources that may be employed to solve the problem is most unfortunate.

A very great resource in the small com-

MORAL ADVANTAGES 25

munity is the rather general neighborhood interest. In most places this is expressed in feelings that may be rightly defined as neighborhood spirit. It is common knowledge that interest is the root of sympathy. One does not care for those in whom he has no interest — at least not without great moral labor. The conditions of city life make this interest in persons difficult; the circumstances of rural and village life make it normal and inevitable that the members of the group should be interested in one another. It is indeed true that this interest does not always express itself in happy ways. It is at times the source of antagonisms and jealousies. It remains a fact, however, that people in the small community find it easy to become interested in one another and that people in the large city find it difficult to be much interested in many persons.

The relation between urban people is likely to be economic. Outside a very small group of friends, the relations have mostly to do with commercial interests among the different members of the group. These interests appear for the most part to be of a character that forbids real sympathy, for they seem largely antagonistic. The reverse is true in the small community. The economic relations are generally few; the personal basis of association is the predominating one. People take a natural and human interest in one another.

This interest makes possible a very real and delightful fellow-feeling. Under wholesome moral influence this resource of personal interest becomes the root of a very practical and beautiful sympathy. The church of the small community has no larger or more promising asset. It can turn this sympathy into many of the most attractive human virtues.

It is doubtful whether this resource of sympathy is generally regarded at its true value, whether the churches know how to get from it all its moral wealth. Often a clear appreciation of its importance as a moral element in social life is lacking. Greater effort may be made to create sym-

MORAL ADVANTAGES 27

pathy for distant and different people than to use the normal and promising sympathy already available. Of course the creation of the first in no way limits the second, but it is sad to see a great moral opportunity neglected, even if moral effort is bringing success at another point. Probably in all such cases the mistake is made in not clearly appreciating how much good may be made to come from the fact that in a small community people are naturally interested in one another.

The conditions of life in the small community offer also another advantage. It is easy to establish a basis for personal moral responsibility. Concerning the importance of this for the moral worker there can be no doubt. The fixing of personal responsibility is the largest problem in moral progress. A community life that naturally puts upon each person the obligations that rightly belong to him, and that holds him responsible for his actions, provides the moral worker with very great resources.

Conditions are different in the city. The size and complexity of the city, the different classes and different standards of moral life, the lack of knowledge of the habits of one's neighbors, the indifference of one person concerning the activities of another — all of these conditions make it difficult, even impossible for the most part, to fix personal responsibility.

It is true that in the cities there are wellorganized and efficient societies that have for their purpose the discovery of evil conditions and the apprehension of the persons responsible. The creation of these gives proof that urban life is weak in its ability to fix responsibility. The society attempts to do what the normal and wholesome public opinion in the small community naturally does.

Great efforts are made in the city to create a public opinion that will be concerned with evils and that will express disapproval. These endeavors of the public to find the evildoer and punish him socially are likely to be fitful, often unfair, and usually, because of their spasmodic

MORAL ADVANTAGES 29

character, ineffective. Their partial successes cost much time, money, and thought which has to be contributed by a few public-spirited leaders in social reforms.

There is often honest doubt as to the real beginning of an evil situation. When the origin has been found the question who is to blame is still difficult to answer. It often seems unfair to put the responsibility upon any one person — so many have contributed to the evil circumstance. Indeed, the public itself, in a most general and irresponsible sense, may have been mostly to blame for the evil for which it now wishes to punish some one.

In the country and village environment there is usually a very definite and forceful fixing of responsibility. This may at times lack sympathy and perspective. It may even become cruel. It is, however, a very powerful resource for the moral worker.

It becomes the duty of the church of the small community to take advantage of this fixing of responsibility and to make it constructive. It requires education and direction. It needs to be given attention in a sympathetic way. Young people especially need to realize the importance of public opinion and the reason why it is unwise and socially wrong to become indifferent to what people may say.