Unfinished business of the Presbyterian church in America

Contents

CHAPTER PAGE

INTRODUCTION 7

I. IN THE SOUTHERN MOUNTAINS 13

Foreword

It is a good thing for each denomination to seek to determine as clearly as it can its own distinctive duty. Unless it does this it is not in a position to plan its proper courses of action or to draw out and use the resources of its membership. It is in no presumptuous or vaunting spirit that the different groups of Christians in our country to-day are seeking thus to ascertain each its own rightful share in the one great task. They are working together in more united and trustful relations than ever before and their work both separately and together will be far more effective by reason of their sure discernment of their own respective obligations.

Mr. Eastman seeks in this little volume to help Presbyterians to realize what their part is or ought to be in some of the great tasks before the Christian forces in America. He has been obliged, of necessity, to select a few of these tasks and to present each of them in as suggestive a way as possible. And the reader will surely agree that he has done his work exceedingly well.

Some people are inspired to greater effort by the success of the work which they have already done. Others are stirred more by the thought not of the "petty done" but of the "undone vast." They agree with Browning that " 'Tis not what man does that exalts him, but what man would do." Mr. Eastman has wisely set forth both the work done and the work still to be done. He has told concrete and moving stories of men and women and the deeds they have wrought by God's blessing in ministering to human need,

6 FOREWORD

in creating Christian faith and character, and in making our country more nearly a Christian land. And he has also drawn the broad and all too dark picture of the vast needs still unmet which call for the lives of young men and young women and for the prayer and support of the whole Church.

How can these be withheld in the face of such evidence of the rich lucrativeness of the investments of life and wealth in that great service of America and of the world? For while this volume deals only with the unfinished business of the Church at home, great issues for all the world hang upon the Church's attitude to that business. We can give only what we have. And we ought to do our whole duty in America both for America's sake and for the sake of the world.

That is the Church's business but it is more than that. It is God's. And there is a word of our Lord's wholly relevant with regard to it: "Knew ye not that I must be about my Father's business?" May we all be set more diligently to doing that business by the study of this book.

Robert E. Speer

Introduction

The Presbyterian Church shares with all other denominations the common purpose of making this world Christian. We are all trying to make Christ's law of love and service the controlling law of human life. We are all endeavoring to convert the spirit of suspicion into a spirit of faith; the spirit of greed into a spirit of giving; the spirit of hatred into a spirit of love; the spirit of selfishness into a spirit of service. We are all working for the Kingdom of God, the time when men shall live together as brothers in justice, righteousness, and friendship.

In this task there is a differentiation of labor. Each denomination stresses those particular phases of the general task for which its history, traditions, and point of view have fitted it. Historically the Presbyterian Church has stressed especially religious and political freedom, education, and Christian service. To be sure we have no monopoly on these ideals. We do not want monopoly. On the contrary we have been trying to get them universally accepted. Getting them universally accepted is part of the unfinished business of our Church.

The reason for our striving for religious and political freedom, education, and service, is deep-rooted in our theology. You cannot plant in the human heart the great conception of a sovereign God, indwelling in the human soul, without that idea some day flowering in a reverence for human personality. And sooner or later reverence for human personality bears fruit in practical efforts for freedom, education, and service; for freedom, education, and service are necessary for the full development of the divine possibilities in human personality.

That is why the Presbyterian Church has always made evangelism — by which we mean getting the human soul

« INTRODUCTION

into fellowship with God — fundamental in all its work. In this we are following the method of Jesus. He called his disciples one by one into fellowship with God. Once they were in that fellowship they grew speedily out of littleness into greatness; out of ignorance into understanding; out of bondage into freedom. They in turn planted the seed of this great conception in the minds of others and, like a sapling that will not be confined, it forced its way into Jewish morality, then into Greek philosophy, then into the Roman Empire, and so on through the centuries. Those great experiments in human liberty, the Swiss and Dutch Republics, the Commonwealth of England, and the United States of America are all products of that seed. The best of our literature and art, our music and our drama, our education and our culture, sprang from the same source. . When the conception of a sovereign God dwelling in the human soul took root in the minds of our Presbyterian forefathers it had a similar growth and bore similar fruit. Consider those fruits in America alone.

We were the first organized body on American soil to propound the doctrine of a free Church and a free State. In 1729, thirty-seven years before the signing of the Declaration of Independence, the Presbyterian Church declared for a separation of Church and State. In 1765 the Presbyterians and the Congregationalists cooperated in resisting a plan to set up in the colonies an Episcopal establishment and to tax "dissenters" for its maintenance. The year before, when political feeling was running high, the General Synod was courageous enough to send out a pastoral letter to all Presbyterians urging their loyal support to the Continental Congress. At the same time a convention in North Carolina composed of delegates who were mainly Presbyterians issued the famous Mecklenburg Declaration of Independence preceding the action of the Colonial Con-

INTRODUCTION g

gress by more than a year. Our Church "taught, practiced, and maintained in fullness, first in this land, that form of government in accordance with which this Republic was organized. The historian Bancroft says: "The Revolution of 1776, so far as it was affected by religion, was a Presbyterian measure. It was the natural outgrowth of the principles which the Presbyterianism of the Old World planted in her sons, the English Puritans, the Scotch Covenanters, the French Huguenots, the Dutch Calvinists, and the Presbyterians of Ulster.' " 1

As for education, we are a college-building, rather than a cathedral-building, Church. The impulse toward education is our historical heritage. John Knox could not conceive of churches apart from schools. His enthusiasm for education was brought to this country by the Scotch and Scotch-Irish, who established our Church here, and that enthusiasm has characterized it ever since. For more than a hundred and fifty years the normal requirement for admission to the ministry has included diplomas representing both classical and theological training. No denomination has maintained a higher standard in this line. If our ideal for the ministry has been high, our ideal for the laity has been equally high. The Presbyterian Church has established 12 theological seminaries, 63 colleges and academies, and a total of 2036 schools of all kinds in 16 countries.

There is no particular reason why Christian service should be spoken of as something distinct from political and religious freedom and education, for fostering such ideals is the greatest kind of service. But in practice we have come to use the term "service" more in the sense of lending a helping hand to less favored neighbors at home and abroad. Caring for the sick, the distressed, the broken:

1 Cf. Roberts, A Brief History of the Presbyterian Church.

io INTRODUCTION

providing opportunities of education; affording vocational training and culture for those who would not otherwise have them; bringing the dynamic of true religion into lives that are wasting away for want of it — these are forms of service that the Presbyterian Church has always counted itself under divine orders to carry on. Our first missionary was appointed in 1775. He was Rev. Samuel Davies sent by the Hanover Presbytery to Georgia. He soon became known as the champion of freedom, the founder of churches, and the friend of learning. Twelve years later we find a general missionary collection being ordered throughout all Presbyterian churches. Last year our 77 hospitals and 98 dispensaries at home and abroad treated 350,284 patients. We maintained too nearly 4000 home and foreign missionaries.

Now these efforts and the great religious conceptions out of which they grew, are all very good. We take what Roosevelt called a "decent pride" in them. But Presbyterians of this generation cannot get into heaven or get heaven into men on the strength of our forefathers' efforts. We must work out our own salvation. There is a mass of unfinished business before us which we must attend to if we are to be worthy sons of worthy sires. In the chapters that follow the author has endeavored to outline this unfinished business in America. He has treated it especially in relation to the practical problems and the specific groups among which the Church is working. These specific groups include among others the 3,000,000 Southern mountaineers, 13,000,000 foreign born, 11,000,000 Negroes, 1 3,000,000 Latin Americans, 1,750,000 Mexicans, 1,500,000 migrant laborers, 334,000 Indians, 54,000 Alaskans, and 500,000 Mormons.

1 The unfinished task among the Nesroes is barely mentioned in this book because it is to be given a whole volume to itself in the plan of study for the succeeding year.

INTRODUCTION n

In dealing with our responsibilities to these groups, let us keep constantly before us our historic ideals of religious and political freedom, education, and Christian service. More important yet, let us bear in mind that these great ideals are the product of such religious conceptions as our faith in a sovereign God, dwelling in the human soul. Fundamental in all our unfinished business, therefore, is evangelism, or getting individuals into fellowship with God. Let us state this here at the beginning in no uncertain terms. If the Presbyterian Church were to forget its history and become so blind as not to see the religious roots of its passion for freedom, its desire for education, and its devotion to human service, and were to set about working for these things simply through laws and movements whose object is to change social environment, it would be a useful institution, but it would cease to be a Christian Church. As a Christian Church we hold that the dynamic of social and political progress is religion and the most effective method of changing environment is through the individual, and the most powerful method of changing the individual is to get him into fellowship with God.

If any further proof of the fundamental necessity of evangelism is needed it lies in the fact that more than sixty per cent of the people of America are not identified with any Christian Church, either Protestant or Catholic, and who shall say how many of those who are nominal members of the Church are still strangers to God!

In each chapter the author has sought to outline briefly the whole task, to describe in some detail one or two specific pieces of work the Church is conducting through its missionaries in that particular field, and finally to sum up the task that remains. In no case has he tried to catalogue all the various projects of the various mission projects of the various Boards and agencies. Any such attempt would

12 INTRODUCTION

produce an encyclopedia and would be a weariness to the flesh. It is better to have a dozen clear pictures that show the spirit and method of the work, than a hundred accounts that would of necessity be sketchy. The author has assumed also that the reader is interested not so much in the particular Board or agency that is doing a piece of work as in the task itself.

Grateful acknowledgment is hereby made to Mrs. M. A. Gildersleeve, Miss Mabel M. Sheibley, Dr. John A. Marquis, Mr. B. Carter Millikin, Mr. John M. Somerndike, Dr. John M. Gaston, and Rev. John Bailey Kelly, for reading the manuscript and for their friendly counsel and criticism. Mrs. Gildersleeve and Miss Sheibley also supplied information on many missionary projects. To Mr. Somerndike the writer is further indebted for much material on the work of colporteurs and the unfinished task of the Church in religious education. Thanks are also due to Mr. Charles A. Thomson, whose excellent report of the camp on Catalina Island was the basis of part of the chapter on the Mexican work; to Dr. Edmund deS. Brunner for much material on rural surveys; to Rev. Kenneth Miller, Rev. Robert W. Anthony, W. P. Fulton, D.D., Rev. W. C. McGarvey, the late George W. Montgomery, D.D., Rev. James J. Coale, Charles L. Zorbaugh, D.D., William T. Jaquess, D.D., Rev. W. Clyde Smith, and Rev. Robert S. Donaldson for information concerning the work of their respective church extension organizations.

And last but not least, the writer expresses his humble gratitude to his wife who kept the babies quiet while he wrote.

Chapter I In The Southern Mountains Southern Mountains

The mountain section stretches along the southern portion of the Appalachian Mountains and extends into northern Georgia and Alabama, embracing a region of two or three million acres. In the Southern Mountains the people live for the most part by hunting, fishing, and growing such corn and vegetables as are absolutely needed. This region is rich in timber and mineral deposits. The chief occupations are agriculture, logging, and until recently, distilling.

The main features of the problem in this section are: isolation, illiteracy, and arrested development. Housing and general living conditions are not good and result in the widespread prevalence of disease. There are few schools and churches, little knowledge of what goes on in the outside world, and small interest either in local or national politics.

Most of the preaching is now done by voluntary pastors, of little education and training, with a great but almost superstitious belief in God. Large portions of this country have no religious services of any kind,

American Volume — Interchurch Survey.

SOUTHERN MOUNTAINS

THE ANSWER Of the Presbyterian Church in the U. S. A.

Through the Woman's Board of Home Missions ten boarding schools and fifteen community stations have been maintained. The boarding schools are located at Mount Vernon, Kentucky; Harriman, Tennessee; Col cord, West Virginia; four at Asheville, one at Concord and two at Hot Springs, North Carolina. These schools employ ninety commissioned workers and enroll 88 3 boys and girls with an average attendance of 660 per day.

The community stations are located at Cortland, Smith, Traveler's Rest, Garrard and Woonton, Kentucky; Sevierville, Flag Pond, and two at Sneedville, Tennessee ; Cabell, Dorothy, Dry Creek, and Montcoal, West Virginia; and Osage Iron Works and Proctor, Missouri. Twenty-eight workers are engaged in these fifteen stations. Last year there were 424 students enrolled in special classes of an educational nature.

Through the Board of Home Missions, the Presbyterian Church is rendering a ministry of health, education, and evangelism, employing eighteen ministers, seventeen teachers, two physicians, £ve nurses, and ten community workers. A hospital and industrial center is being developed at White Rock, North Carolina; schools at Alpine and Jewett, Tennessee, and at Burnsville, North Carolina; a church and community center work at Vardy, Tennessee, and at Kingston, Arkansas.

Good work — but only a drop in t h e bucket when we consider that more than 3,000,000 human beings are to be reached.

Chapter I IN THE SOUTHERN MOUNTAINS

A Story of the Laurel Country. "The doctor's going is like the stopping of running water." It was a mountain woman's tribute to Dr. George H. Packard when after seven years of unremitting toil in the Laurel country of western North Carolina he left to take a rest and regain his health. Another of his mountain friends, a man, put it this way, "I'd be satisfied if the doctor would just fly over here once a week in an airplane and wave his hand."

Seven years before, he had come into the community when there was neither railroad nor good road, nor doctor, nor nurse, nor newspaper, nor preacher within a radius of eighteen miles. He had met suspicion and prejudice and hostility, and no wonder! for most of those who had come into the community from the outside world had merely come to stare, and then had gone away to laugh at the ways of the mountain people. Somehow the doctor had overcome the suspicion and prejudice and hostility, and now after seven years' work he was leaving behind him a thoroughly equipped hospital, an able associate doctor, a nurse, and some hundreds of friends that would have gladly shared their all with him.

But, after all, this story doesn't begin with the doctor's coming. In fact it is difficult to find just where it does begin. Our Presbyterian faith tells us that it all began in the heart of God, but we are curious enough to want to know more about the human beings through whom he worked. When you talk to the doctor he tells you of his capable wife, and of Miss Frances L. Goodrich and Miss Fish, two brave women who labored here for eighteen years before he came. And he tells you of the late Mr. Campbell of the Russell Sage Foundation and of Dr. Warren H. Wilson of the Board of Home Missions. All these he says were in the conspiracy. Ask of them and you are told that Miss Florence Stephenson, formerly head of the Asheville Home School of the Woman's Home Board, was responsible for enlisting them. If you trace the thing back from the Board records in New York you reach ultimately the same answer — Miss Stephenson. You find that in 1886 Rev. and Mrs. Pease gave some property in the suburbs of Asheville for home mission purposes and here a little later was started the first Industrial School, with Miss Stephenson as principal. A young woman of large vision, big heart, and great executive ability, she seems to have been a moving spirit in nearly every good work in that region for the last thirty years. At the time of this writing she is in Alaska and unreachable. It's just as well for it seems to be fatal to talk to her on this subject. Before she is through with you she has signed you up to spend the rest of your days in some mountain community forty miles from a railroad, and you are thanking her for the privilege. That is what happened to Miss Goodrich about twenty-five years ago. She visited Miss Stephenson's school in Asheville, and a few months later she accepted a life sentence and seemed to be happy about it. Miss Goodrich had had the training of a Presbyterian manse, college, art schools, travel in America and Europe, and she put it all into her work in the Southern Mountains so gladly and effectively for the next twenty-five years that she is known and loved to-day throughout that mountain region as "the little bishop of Laurel."

What was her work? She began by going into a mountain community where the people had been shut away from the opportunities that the rest of us have had, opportunities for proper schooling, wholesome social life, books, travel, and even church. It had always been difficult to get thoroughly trained teachers to go into such communities, because they had no suitable place to live, the salary was meager, and usually the school term was only a few weeks. Often the total school appropriation from the school district was under $50.00 for the entire year. Miss Goodrich's first aim was to provide a home for a teacher. She would secure or build some little cottage where the teacher would be comfortable. She would live in that house with the teacher, be a companion to her, and help her in the school when needed, and gradually persuade the community round about to better the school, provide more money for it, and lengthen the school term to eight months. She took one community at a time and stayed by it until the school was well on the way to standard and the people ready to go on with it. Then she would secure a capable woman community worker to take her place with the teacher and she would move on to the next community. Always she chose her next place with care. She would never duplicate the work of any other missionary, or enter a field possessed by some other denomination. Thus it was that she established her work at Rice's Cove, Allanstand, Alleghany, Big Laurel, Carmen, Revere, and White Rock.

Right here should be set down the record of a "perfect cycle" — a long-headed piece of statesmanship. Beginning with a school that was held three or four weeks a year and taught usually by a mountain man whose own education was very deficient — sometimes he could not teach writing because he could not write himself — Miss Goodrich increased the length of the school term, provided a capable teacher, and supplemented the school fund with as much money as was necessary to pay a good teacher for six or eight months. The teacher and the community worker watched each developing child. The more promising children were encouraged to complete eight grades and then to go on to Asheville Home School where they were given a four-year course 'fitting them to go back into their mountain communities as teachers taking the places of the teachers Miss Goodrich had brought in from the outside. Thus the cycle was completed. The school was again taught by one of its own community but this time by an educated girl and for a period of eight months instead of a few weeks.

Where did Miss Goodrich get the money? For the most part she begged it. She begged from her personal friends and from her father's congregation in Cleveland.

But she was not content to beg all her money from the outside. The mountaineers themselves had practically no money, but this did not daunt her. She set to work on a plan by which they could earn money. The consummation of this plan was the formation of the Allanstand Cottage Industries, manufacturing rugs, table runners, baskets, and so forth. The grandmothers of the mountain women had developed these arts to a high degree but they had been allowed to fall into disuse, partly from lack of materials and partly from lack of market. Miss Goodrich began by providing materials and then offering herself to take charge of the marketing. The old grandmothers' looms were restored, repaired, and put to work. The old patterns were revived. When a sufficient number of quilts, baskets, and rugs were finished, Miss Goodrich offered them for sale in

Asheville and in New York. The sale was difficult at first but when she put into the hands of the mountain women who had made the articles, the money which she had received from them, their gratitude encouraged her to go on. Last year she sold $12,000 worth of these products. This was bringing into the community money which could be used for giving the children better education and for purchasing those bits of the outside world for which the mountain women were hungering.

Many stories have been told about the southern mountaineers and their ways. Miss Goodrich was warned when she went into the mountains that she should never go alone. She must always have some one with her to protect her. Yet she always went alone and never had any protection except the companionship of some other woman. In twenty-five years she has never been insulted. One night two drunken men drove up to her little cabin where she and a community worker were living. The men demanded food and lodging. Stepping out on the little stoop Miss Goodrich faced them and spoke quietly, "We are just women alone here," she said. The men with hats off apologized for troubling them and rode away.

Building up schools and starting industries would be enough to keep an ordinary woman busy, but Miss Goodrich and her community workers were not ordinary women and they were called upon for many other kinds of community service. Since there was no doctor they were often called upon to help cure the sick, to pull teeth, to "lay out" the dead. From a famous surgeon in Asheville, Miss Goodrich secured six vials of the more common medicines along with careful instruction how to use them. No one knew better than she that this sort of treatment was only a stopgap, and gradually the conviction grew upon her that somehow she must arrange to have a real doctor come to live among the mountain people to render them the medical service they so much needed.

One day a baby died — a baby that might have lived had there been a doctor to minister to it. Thereupon Miss Goodrich applied to Mr. Campbell, Russell Sage Foundation Director of Southern Mountain work, to find her a doctor who would be willing to go down and live among the mountaineers.

And here the story leaves the Southern Mountains and follows Mr. Campbell to Medford, Massachusetts, and to the private hospital of Dr. George H. Packard. Dr. Packard had just lost his only child. The loss had been almost more than he could bear and he went away with a heavy heart about the practice in which he had been happy for sixteen years. More and more after his baby died he was interested in children. When Mr. Campbell's wife was about to bring into the world her first-born, Mr. Campbell took her to Dr. Packard's private hospital, and there it was that as acquaintance ripened into friendship Mr. Campbell presented to Dr. Packard the needs of the Southern Mountains and especially of the Laurel country. It was there that he told Dr. Packard of the baby that had died because no doctor was available.

Dr. Packard listened and was moved. He was willing to go down and take a look at the country. Mr. Campbell lost no time in arranging it. It was late in October, and amid sleet, rain, and mud when the visit was made. For ten days Dr. Packard and his wife plodded through the mud. Finally on their way back to the nearest railroad station he turned to Mrs. Packard. "Well, dear, would you be willing to tackle the job under these conditions?" Mrs. Packard had been a missionary in China and had lived through the Boxer uprising and her answer came quickly, "I am willing to come back if I ever live to get out." So it came about that Dr. Packard and Mrs. Packard, seven years ago, left a successful practice and a private hospital in Medford, Massachusetts, and bringing all they had in the world — character and training, instruments and furniture — invested all in the lives of the men and women and children of Laurel Country.

Consider the difficulties the doctor faced. There was no railroad less than 18 miles distant. The only highways were mountain trails, for long periods impassable except on horseback. Most of the cabins were located along creeks in the mountains far removed from road or telephone or any connection whatever with the outside world. The average mountain home had but one or two rooms, and was without rug or carpet or furniture except a few homemade chairs. Pigs and chickens as well as cats and dogs had the freedom of the house. Patent medicines were considered trustworthy. All children were brought into the world by midwives. The only doctor the people had ever known had sold medicine at twenty-five cents a bottle and sometimes the medicine was a drink of whisky. The nearest hospital was in Asheville, fifty-two miles away, and so inaccessible was it because of the roads, that it might as well have been a thousand miles away.

Moreover folks were not likely to send for the doctor until their case had become more or less serious, and they had exhausted the traditional methods of treatment. It was in these very traditional methods that the doctor found one of his chief difficulties. Turpentine was regarded as a cure-all and had been applied in many cases where it did more harm than good. Called to treat a severely burned arm the doctor would likely find that a "remedy" had already been applied, the "remedy" consisting of a coating of molasses and soot. This, of course, the doctor had to remove before he could begin any constructive work on the wound. Often he found severe cuts filled with lime or soot, "to stop the flow of blood."

Never was there any privacy in treating patients. When a man or a woman fell ill and the doctor was finally called, he found upon his arrival that the house was filled with neighbors who observed his every move with intense interest. "Watch him! Watch him!" passed in whispers around the circle and the doctor's every act was performed amid a "cloud of witnesses." At first he was regarded with suspicion. Something was wrong, folks felt, with a doctor who would come into that remote section. Mountain children scampered into the brush at his approach. For a long time some of the older folk tried to catch him in a lie. But his modesty and sincerity disarmed the suspicion and when they discovered that the doctor was a religious man and occasionally prayed over cases that he felt were beyond his normal skill, they began to have faith in him. For the mountain people, whatever their deliquencies, are religious. The Bible is their one book. It was on the common ground of religion that they met and understood the doctor. And by and by they began to apply to him a high tribute: "He's common," by which they meant that he was democratic and they had taken him into their hearts.