In the Eighteen Counties of Southeastern Ohio some of the older and stronger denominations are well represented, as Table C shows. (See page39.) No less than 526, or more than one-third, of the total number of churches are Methodist Episcopal. Nearly one-tenth are United Brethren in Christ, another tenth Baptist, one-fifteenth Christian, and one-fifteenth Presbyterian; while other powerful denominations are also present. It is evident that the failure of the churches in this area cannot be laid to the weakness or poverty of the denominations represented, for they are for the most part neither weak nor poor. Ohio, moreover, is a wealthy State, and its churches make large contributions for church work and church extension both in America and abroad.
It has been too commonly held in the past that missionary effort should consist largely in organizing and building churches. We do not believe that proposition is sound. In rural Ohio the worst moral and religious conditions are found where there are the largest number of churches in proportion to the number of inhabitants.
In 39 counties out of a total of 88 in the State, there is one country church for each 275 people or less. (SeeMap 5andTable A, column 5.) Of these 39 counties, 17 are among the Eighteen Counties under our special consideration. Outside these Eighteen Counties and the counties contiguous to them, no county has an average of less than 228 persons to a church, but it appears that Washington has one church for 226 persons, Monroe one for 214, Pike one for 211, Gallia one for 197, Morgan one for 194, Jackson one for 193, while Vinton has one for 182, and Meigs one church for 178. In the rural sections of these Eighteen Counties thereare 1,542 churches and 248 townships, or more than 6 churches to a township.
While the fact that this region is more difficult to travel, because more hilly, than many other parts of the State might constitute a reason for having many churches, it certainly cannot be held that the bad moral and religious conditions which exist are due to lack of a sufficient number of them. Nor is support here to be found for the contention sometimes made that religious work thrives best under competition.
The larger the number of churches in proportion to the population, the more difficult it obviously becomes to secure, support, and retain resident pastors. In proportion to the number of churches, the Eighteen Counties have a comparatively small number of ministers. (SeeMap 6andTable A, column 6.) In the State as a whole, about one-third, or 34 per cent, of the churches have resident ministers. In only three counties outside the Eighteen is it true that less than one-fourth of the churches have them. These are Delaware, Coshocton, and Pickaway, and the latter is one of the bordering counties. But in 13 of the Eighteen Counties less than one-fourth of the churches have resident ministers. It will be noted that less than one-fifth of the churches in Scioto, Pike, Lawrence, and Meigs Counties have resident ministers, one-sixth in Morgan County, and less than one-sixth in Jackson, Hocking, and Gallia.
In the Eighteen Counties the number of resident ministers in proportion to the population, as well as in proportion to the number of churches, is small. (SeeMap 7andTable A, column 7.) There are 24 counties in Ohio in which there are more than 1,000 persons for each resident minister, of which 13 are among the Eighteen Counties under consideration, and three among the bordering counties. Noble County has a resident minister to every 1,240 persons, Gallia to every 1,396, Lawrence to every 1,450, Pickaway to every 1,458, while Hocking has only one to 1,693, or nearly 1,700 persons. Here, as in most rural sections, an absentee ministry is necessarily ineffective. (See pages50-51.)
The foregoing facts afford convincing evidence that the church in thisregion is rendering poor service—how poor the reader may judge from the following description of the religious and ecclesiastical conditions found by Mr. Gill in his personal investigation on the ground.
For the most part the farm people of these Eighteen Counties are very religious. This is attested not merely by the large number of churches, but also by the frequency of well-attended revival services, held in spring, summer, autumn, and winter. (In Pike County, for example, no less than 1,500 revival services were held in thirty years, or an average of 50 each year.) Yet a normal, wholesome religion, bearing as its fruit better living and all-round human development, and cherished and propagated by sane and sober-minded people, is rarely known. The main function of a church, according to the popular conception, is to hold these protracted meetings, to stir up religious emotion, and, under its influence, to bring to pass certain psychological experiences. The idea seems to be dominant in nearly all the denominations and churches that the presence of the Deity is made known mainly, if not solely, through states of intense emotion which may be stimulated in religious assemblies. Such emotion is held to be not only a manifestation of the Deity’s presence, but also a proof of His existence. No man is held to be religious or saved from evil destiny unless he has had such experience. It becomes, therefore, the business of the preacher of the church to create conditions favorable to the experiencing of these emotions.
Officials of denominations to which more than two-thirds of the churches belong encourage or permit the promotion of a religion of the excessively emotional type, which encourages rolling upon the floor by men, women, and children, and going into trances, while some things which have happened in the regular services of a church in one of the largest denominations cannot properly be described in print. The leaders of a religious cult commonly called Holy Rollers seem to be most efficient in this direction. The character of their services and activities produce the results desired, according to the traditions accepted and proclaimed for generations by ignorant preachers to a nonprogressive people.
A Holy Roller movement was started in Pike County in the year 1902. It has steadily been gaining ground ever since, and has never been more flourishing than now. It is the livest sect in this and neighboring counties. Its meetings are large and full of enthusiasm. Except the churches of this cult, very few are now left in the western half of Pike County which show any activity whatever. In one district of 150 square miles (in which there are 1,200 children enrolled in the schools and in all 1,600 young people from the ages of six to twenty) no churches were holding services in 1917 except those of the Holy Rollers.
The seasons of protracted Holy Roller meetings often last for several weeks. Frequently they begin each day at 10.00 A. M. and continue until 2.00 A. M. the next day, with intermissions for meals. These meetings are characterized by much singing, with music well adapted to rythmic motions of the body, by dancing and clapping the hands, sometimes by shouting and joyous screaming, rolling upon the floor, tumbling together of men and women in heaps, trances, while at least one of their preachers has exercised hypnotic power over some of his followers and has put them through stunts in no way differing from those of the professional hypnotist showman who, in times past, for the price of admission, has amused and astonished his audience with exhibitions of his skill.
In one village where Mr. Gill attended a church belonging to this movement, it was the only religious organization holding services or showing any signs of life. Although at this service the building was full to its capacity, as is usual with meetings of this kind, the church not only had no Sunday school, but its leaders kept the children away from one which a missionary of the American Sunday School Union was trying to start in the neighborhood. Three-fourths of the parents of the fifty pupils in the local school were adherents of this cult, yet its leaders opposed having better day schools. The school principal, under the direction of the County School Superintendent, tried to hold literary meetings for intellectual and social improvement, but under the influence of the Holy Roller leaders, the parents refused to let their children attend, and theenterprise was defeated. Apparently no meeting for any purpose is to be tolerated except the Holy Roller meetings themselves. These theoretically and in fact take the place of all other gatherings.
The Holy Roller church in this community, as elsewhere, in its total influence promotes immorality. It has a tendency to break up families and destroy the peace and harmony of the neighborhood. In the judgment of the more sober-minded people, the Holy Roller movement spoils the life of the community wherever it goes.
Although the Holy Roller cult apparently was not started in this region until a few years ago, it would seem that the religious activities of the older denominational churches were but a good preparation for it. In fact, good soil is found for sprouting the seed of Holy Rollerism in many sections of the State. The difference in religious beliefs and ideals between the Holy Rollers and the preachers of other denominations in the Eighteen Counties too often is not easily detected. Denominations to which at least two-thirds of the churches belong employ many men and women as preachers who are extremely ignorant.
In one of its districts, nearly half of the twenty or thirty ministers of the largest denomination in the State did not have a common school education. It is usual to find ministers intellectually inferior to a number of families whom they are supposed to lead and teach. In some districts a considerable proportion of the preachers have had no more than three or four grades of common school instruction. Some cannot write their own names correctly. Accordingly religious education is neglected. The people apparently have been untouched by the general advance in religious knowledge during the past century.
Many intelligent people in the Eighteen Counties deplore these conditions and would be glad to have churches of a different type. But it is also very common to find among the more prosperous, especially in the fertile river valleys, a spirit of utter indifference towards religion, and often of gross materialism. Under such circumstances it is not surprising to find that in several sections much hostility to institutional religionexists. It is given expression by rural hoodlums who cut to pieces harnesses and slash tires belonging to ministers or laymen who attend religious gatherings, while in some communities stones are thrown through the windows of buildings where public worship is being held.
While it is true that out of the poorest and most unfortunate districts bright boys and girls frequently emerge, escape their surroundings, and become good citizens, it is none the less true that a large proportion of those who remain have no reasonable chance for wholesome development.
The bad influence of the Eighteen Counties extends far beyond their borders. Out of them many farm laborers have gone to communities to the north and northwest, often with deplorable results to the social, religious, and moral conditions of the communities where they are employed. (SeeTable B.) It is calculated that no less than 61,000 persons emigrated in the ten-year period from 1900 to 1910 from the strictly rural districts ofsixteenof the Eighteen Counties.
In Madison, a fertile county near the center of the State, in an area sixteen miles long and from seven to eleven miles wide, there are three closed and no active churches. One of the causes of this condition is the fact that the farm laborers imported by the owners of large tracts of lands were never made familiar, before they came, with a normal type of religion. These men come from the Eighteen Counties or from sections across the Ohio River where the conditions are very much the same. In parts of several other counties the situation brought about by similar immigration is extremely bad.
The Eighteen Counties demand missionary activity on the part of the church as a whole, not only for the sake of the unfortunate people who live in them, but also for the sake of the other regions whose welfare is threatened by the transfer of low standards of all kinds, which, like a forest fire, are creeping away from the region where they originated.
Among the large number of intelligent persons who know and deplore the situation in typical communities of southeastern Ohio, very few seem to cherish hope of improvement. Such pessimism appears to beunjustified. Good work is now being done by missionaries of the American Sunday School Union. What is more important, there is much promise that the trouble can be reached and cured by the modern country church movement, which is already making real progress in Ohio. As a result of this movement, for example, the Board of Home Missions of the Methodist Episcopal Church has, for the first time, appropriated missionary funds to be used in this section, while one of the District Superintendents of the same denomination is carrying out a radically changed program for the churches under his supervision.
Map AWhere Conditions Demand Missionary Aid
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Map 1High Death Rates from Tuberculosis
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Map 2High Rates of Illegitimacy
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Map 3Where Illiteracy Abounds
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Map 4Distribution of Foreign Born Whites
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Map 5Excessive Over-Churching
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Map 6Churches Many but Ministers Few
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Map 7Number of Persons to a Resident Minister
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Map 8Value of Farm Property in the Year 1910
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Map 9Increase in Value of Farm Property
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Map 10Rich Land and Poor Land
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TABLE A
Showing that in a Group of 18 Counties in Southeastern Ohio there is an Excessive Amount of Preventable Disease and Illiteracy, an Excessive Number of Illegitimate Births, Excessive Overchurching, a very Small Number of Resident Ministers in Proportion to the Number of Churches and Number of People, that as Compared with Other Sections the Total Value of Farm Property is Small and the Increase in Value Slight
1 —Average annual rate of deaths from tuberculosis of the lungs per 100,000 persons, 1909, 1910, 19112 —Average annual rate per 100,000 population of illegitimate births for 1909, 19103 —Per cent of illiterate males of voting age, 19104 —Per cent of total population who were foreign born white, 19105 —Number of persons to a church6 —Per cent of churches which have resident ministers7 —Number of persons to each resident minister8 —Number of millions of dollars at which farm property is valued9 —Per cent increase in value of farm property 1900-1910
TABLE B
Showing Calculated Number of Persons who Migrated from the Rural Districts of Sixteen Counties in Southeastern Ohio 1900-1910
TABLE C
Denominations of the Churches in Eighteen Counties of Southeastern Ohio
The roots of the religious and moral life of the Nation are chiefly in the country church. As in southeastern Ohio, so in any area where the church fails, degeneracy begins. The low and sordid moral atmosphere found in so many rural villages and communities, not only among the Eighteen Counties, but throughout the State (and far beyond the boundaries of Ohio) is altogether unnecessary. It constitutes a challenge to the church which can no longer go unheeded. Obviously, whatever reforms in methods and policies may be required to enable it efficiently to perform its task must be made.
One of the chief underlying causes of the present condition of the churches is an imperfect conception of their function. We recognize the fact that the effective proclaiming of the Gospel is the essential if not the greatest and most important task of the churches, but the impression is still very widespread in the Ohio churches that to preach it from pulpit and platform is almost their only task. That this is not enough to bring the churches to their full effectiveness has been conclusively proved by the experience of foreign missionaries during the past hundred years. In proportion to the number of their missionaries, the missionary societies which have believed that proclaiming the Christian message is the only function of the church, have not made as many converts nor built up as strong churches as those which engage also in the work of healing the sick and teaching. The most successful missionaryorganizations teach not only Christian life and theology, but all that makes for what is best in our Christian civilization.
The welfare of a man’s soul may be increased by promoting the welfare of the rest of him, and the aim of the church should be to bring every man to the highest possible development of all his powers. In seeking to do so it will not only be more effective in creating a higher manhood and womanhood, but will also make its message better understood and secure a greater number of church members and adherents.
For our city churches also this is as true as for the foreign missionary field, although perhaps less obviously so. The equipment of so large a number of modern city churches for various forms of social service is a strong indication that those who control their policies recognize the necessity of a more diversified field of work.
The success and growth of the Y. M. C. A. is another indication of the truth for which we are contending. This institution which is a branch or arm of the Christian church has declared its aim to be the development of “soul, mind, and body.” As a result of this policy it is now engaged in many kinds of work which should also be done more widely and generally and so on a greater scale throughout the church. It receives large contributions of money from members of the churches, and it rightly undertakes and successfully carries out large enterprises where other church organizations fail to see their duties and opportunities and lag behind or remain idle.
Still another reason for believing in a larger function and mission of the church is found in the fact that every strikingly successful country church is found to be deeply concerned with the needs of the community, and is carrying out a broad and comprehensive program of service. This is true not only in the State of Ohio, but throughout the Nation.
Finally and conclusively, it may be added that the broader program was instituted and carried out by the Founder of the Christian religion, and was by Him enjoined upon His followers.
What the new program for the local country church should be is nolonger a matter of conjecture. Country ministers in very many widely separated parishes of the United States have worked it out independently in trying to meet the needs of their communities, and have everywhere reached substantially the same conclusion. The program is essentially the same in all places where the most successful country church work is done. It has found an embodiment in the mass of country church literature which has been published during the past eight years, and it has been studied, tried, and proved to meet the need of large numbers of country pastors in Ohio and in many of the other States. How it has been carried out in some Ohio parishes is described in Chapter VIII, pages 75-87.
To carry out the better program for the local country church requires an educated ministry. Ohio has suffered greatly from ministerial quackery. Very imperfectly equipped ministers, such as are found in nearly every county of the State, and unsound ignorant men, such as are so common in the Eighteen Counties, cannot meet the requirements of the new program. Doubtless the educational requirements of the discipline of many of the denominations are set too low, but even so, if the rules of the discipline were strictly obeyed, a large proportion of the present ministers would be eliminated. The new program requires trained men.
To get better men, better opportunity and better pay must be supplied. Fields of service must be created large enough, yet sufficiently compact and free from competing rivals, to make good work possible. The farmers must be convinced that better support of the ministry is essential, in their own interest. At the same time the best young men of the churches must be assured that the new program offers a field so promising as to make it worth their while to enter the ministry. The churches are wise enough and strong enough to do all this if they will address themselves to the situation and take it seriously.
In a large part of Ohio the farmers are able and ready to multiply the amount of money they now contribute for the support of the churches. When it is made clear to them that better pay will bring a better minister, increased support will cheerfully be given. But the farmers will not give more money either for the support of an inferior minister, or to carry out the old program. They will demand their money’s worth, and this the present methods do not, in general, supply. The increased prosperity and consequent ability of the farmers to support the church more liberally is indicated by the fact that the total value of farm property in Ohio increased nearly 60 per cent during the ten-year period from 1900 to 1910.
But it must be remembered that increased support will not be given by the farmers unless the need for it, and what it will bring, is brought forcefully to their attention. This the individual minister cannot do, for to attempt it lays him open to the charge of feathering his own nest. It should be done by a State Federation of Churches or by such organizations as The Ohio Rural Life Association, acting through its own institutes and the farmers’ institutes, through the circulation of its literature, and through the formation of organizations for this purpose in the churches of the different counties. No matter how good work a minister may do, ordinarily he will not be adequately supported unless some special agency does this work.
The present system of circuits entails upon the country minister an enormous waste of time. If a man tries to do the pastoral work which is strictly necessary, he must spend a very large proportion of his working hours in driving to the widely separated points of his various parishes, crossing and recrossing as he goes the lines of travel of other ministers engaged in the same territory upon the same work. That the country minister should be called upon to waste so large a part of his life in thisway is shameful because it is bad and inefficient organization, and carries with it an utterly needless loss.
To understand the significance of pastoral calling in a rural community it must be remembered that isolation is as characteristic of the country as congestion is of the cities. A large proportion of rural families look upon a minister who calls frequently as a personal asset of great value. He supplies opportunities not otherwise available for the discussion of matters of general interest or of deep personal concern. He calls attention to the things otherwise forgotten, and brings, or should bring with him, the inestimable advantage of intimate contact with a wise and well-trained mind. Moreover, a man full of good will to all going from house to house, sympathetically trying to help and understand, will inevitably modify the uncharitable and unjust public opinion which either exists or is believed to exist in most rural communities.
Equally effective are the incidental contacts of a minister engaged in community service, such as work with boys, or the promotion of welfare enterprises. Thus engaged he will inevitably get in touch with his parishioners, and supply the needs of individuals and of the community, at least as fully as the minister who devotes most of his working hours to pastoral calls. In such work less time is spent in the long drives or walks between houses which are necessary in systematic calling, while the minister gets to know the men better and bothers them less.
Without pastoral calling and community welfare work, the country minister’s service is sure to be ineffective. But as a matter of fact the country ministers of Ohio for the most part do very little of either. The country people as a rule, receive very few pastoral calls, according to the almost universal testimony of the country ministers themselves as well as that of other persons who live in the country. In Delaware County, for example, a prosperous county in the center of the State, there is an area of 82 square miles, with more than 2,100 people, in which only one minister makes any pastoral calls, and he makes very few. Half the townships of this county have no resident ministers.
Mr. Gill found one township in the north-central section of the State in which the farmers’ families probably had not been called on once in five years. One woman had not received a call from a minister in twelve years. When finally called upon she became a regular and happy church attendant, though she had not been to church since her childhood. Another family was found in the same region whose house no minister had entered for nineteen years. In an Ohio River township, the members of a family testified that a minister had not called on them for twenty-five years, and still others asserted that no minister had ever entered their homes. From the reports of eighteen pastors in one denominational district it appeared that on an average each one made only six calls a year upon non-church members, although these were more than 60 per cent of the people. “Our minister does not know the people of this community” is common testimony everywhere in the country parishes.
The country minister’s influence is still further reduced because his term of service is short—usually but a year or two, rarely three years. Moreover, his efforts are commonly divided among several communities and thus are spread too thin to produce results. Add to that the fact that in each community the people whom he serves are intermingled with the parishioners of ministers of other denominations. Under these circumstances how can he become efficient in community service, and how can he get to know the people of his charge? Ordinarily he does not even attempt it. Under present conditions the country minister who does, generally accomplishes little and wears himself into discouragement.
The old circuit system under which many of the denominations developed their work and which is now the system employed in nearly all the larger denominations in the State, was of undoubted value in the beginning of their work in pioneer days. But like many other efficient methodsof early times it has ceased to be the best method for present needs, in the form in which we now find it at work. This is true except in a few instances where it appears in such a modified form as to be adaptable to present conditions.
Under the circuit system it has often been accepted as a policy by church officials that every church must have a minister and every minister a church. The advantages accruing both to the churches and ministers from a reasonably cautious and not too consistent application of such a rule are obvious. But failure to use such caution and too great insistence on its universal application too often have resulted in the employment of unequipped and uneducated ministers and sometimes even of men whose character was questionable, which in turn, has helped to bring about a low standard of pay for the minister. The pay of the skilled has fallen to that of the unskilled, and the total result has been to cheapen the ministry. The standard among farmers for the support of both church and minister, therefore, has fallen low. We must have a greatly modified system or a better system before the ministry can be better paid.
Under the circuit system as now applied in Ohio the churches too often provide for but little else than preaching. Even the Sunday school, one of the most hopeful and valuable kinds of church work, is hampered by it, for this work needs the leadership of a trained ministry, which the present circuit system tends to prevent. The minister with a circuit can rarely attend the services of his Sunday schools, and the task of promoting the Sunday school work during the week in the several communities of his charge is usually too arduous for him.
In times past it has been held commendable for a denomination to establish one of its churches in every community, regardless of the number of churches already there. By making use of the present circuit system, it has been possible to establish and after a fashion to maintain a church almost anywhere. Hence the present unfortunate multiplication of churches.
When rural communities are overchurched, as under the working ofthis plan in Ohio most of them are, competition between them necessarily results not in the survival of the fit, but in the continued existence of an excessive number of bloodless, moribund churches, whose energies are almost entirely exhausted in the mere effort to keep alive.
When the circuit system is adopted by more than one competing denomination in a field as it is in Ohio it helps to perpetuate interchurch competition. When one adopts it all others must, or retire from the field. It cannot be held that the resulting competition helps to make more Christians, or that it tends to develop character or community life. On the contrary, it reduces both the power of the church as a whole and the influence of the individual churches for personal righteousness and community welfare. Then, as the churches under the competitive system grow weaker, they must be yoked in larger circuits. So far has the practice gone that in one circuit in Ohio there are actually ten churches.
A variation of this system is found in certain Holy Roller churches where an undefined number of churches together depend for their leadership on a group of itinerant revivalists. Frequent or occasional seasons of revival services often constitute the sole activity of these churches, yet because of the weakness of the latter they are succeeding or have succeeded in crowding out many churches of the older denominations. There is a clear instance of this in the western half of Pike County, where nearly all the churches are abandoned excepting those of the Holy Rollers—a striking example of reverse selection or the survival of the unfit.
The movement for the conservation and improvement of rural life has no greater enemy than the misused circuit system. Not only does it weaken the churches, but it necessarily discourages the development of the community and of community life. With his efforts divided among three or more different communities, his parishioners mingled with members of competing churches, the country minister cannot hope for the coöperation necessary to effective leadership. His success in any workfor the community, because it would add prestige to his church, as a rule is not desired by the members of other denominations. The entire circuit situation as it works to-day in the region here under investigation whatever may be its value elsewhere tends to make the modern program of successful churches entirely impracticable.
Escape from the deadening environment of the country church circuit is the ardent desire of most country ministers who have had any reasonable degree of equipment for their vocation, and self-improvement as a preacher seems to be the only way out. The circuit minister of such equipment naturally regards his present work as temporary. He looks forward to leaving the country through promotion to a town church. The city, where he hopes to be, and not the country, where he is, becomes for him the only field for success in the ministry.
It is evident, therefore, that country parishes to be successful must be more compact. As a substitute for the circuit, churches in a small community where there are too many should be united in the support of one resident minister. If they cannot support him, then other adjacent churches should join with them in a federated circuit under a single pastor. Such is the right use of the circuit in the country.
The territory thus placed under one minister may be so large as to make it desirable to employ a paid assistant to the pastor. Freed from the necessity of long drives to other communities, the pastor can make many calls nearer home. Community enterprises, under this system made possible, will bring the pastor into personal touch with the people. He will become their friend and they will wish him a long term of service among them. And only when a minister has been two or three years in a community can he begin to render his most effective service. The enlarged and unified parish, such as that of Benzonia, Michigan, or Hanover, New Jersey, should be carefully distinguished from the misused circuit, which now plays so significant a part in the church life of Ohio. Parishes like these afford all the benefits of the circuit with none of its defects.
Map 11