Recreation is essential to the moral life of any people. It is the constructive method of making individuals into good citizens. Especially valuable is it as a means of educating the young people and the working people of the community. The craving for this social training and ethical experience drives many out of the country community. Conversely, training in social morality is to be undertaken especially by the church, which possesses the conscience of the country community. This training is expressed in the one phrase; the promotion of recreation.
The worship of God is anexpressionof the consciousness of kind. "This consciousness is a social and a socializing force, sometimes exceedingly delicate and subtle in its action; sometimes turbulent and all-powerful. Assuming endlessly varied modes of prejudice and of prepossession, of liking and disliking, it tends always to reconstruct and dominate every mode of association and every social grouping."[35]This description by Professor Giddings is so near to a description of worship, that it is startling.
Of all human acts of the conscientious man worship is the most highly symbolic. They who worship are alike, and in their likeness are unlike to others. It is an expression of their awareness of resemblance and of difference. The definitions of consciousness of kind, as a sociological process, go a long way to explain without further comment, both the strength and the weakness of the churches in America.
The churches have to struggle with a narrow and small social horizon. Few people are so consciousof their kinship with all others in their community that they desire those others to worship with them. The sense of unlikeness to others is, unfortunately, as strong in their feelings as the sense of likeness unto their own. In the American community with many newcomers, and some foreigners, this sense of unlikeness is natural. It is not to be wondered that men should think themselves more like unto their old neighbors than unto the new. It is not surprising that with new economic processes men should ignore their unity with those who co-operate with them in getting a living, and should be conscious of their unity with those whose living comes in the same form. As a result, we have working men's churches and "rich men's clubs," "college churches," "student pastors," churches which minister to old families, and new chapels built by tenant farmers. But these phases of worship are peculiar to the times of transition in which we live. The immaturity of oureconomicprocesses, and the greater immaturity of our economic knowledge, explain the failure of worshiping people to assemble by communities; but the process which assembles men of kindred mind to worship together now is capable of bringing men together in larger wholes.
The spirit of federation is in the air. The longing for religious unity is a response to the stimuli of common experience in the same locality. Men who meet throughout the week, if they worship at all, discover a desire to worship together. The comingof great occasions and the celebrations of anniversaries, train them in some common assemblies. I remember how the tidings of the death of President McKinley brought together all the people of the community in an act of worship. Their response to a profound sense of danger was a community response, and the church which was prompt to open its doors, found men of all faiths within.
At a recent meeting of the National Body of one of the greatest Protestant churches, proceedings were halted by the moderator, who read a telegram announcing the friendly action of another religious body. This action looked toward union of the two denominations. It was a response to overtures from the body there in session. Instantly the whole assembly sprang up, applauding and cheering, and led by a clear, musical voice, broke out in a hymn. That hymn is profoundly sociological in its language, and its use is increasing among Christian people. It expresses that worship which is a consciousness of kind. Its words are
Blest be the tie that bindsOur hearts in Christian love:The fellowship of kindred mindsIs like to that above.Before our Father's throneWe pour our ardent prayers;Our fears, our hopes, our aims, are one,Our comforts and our cares.We share our mutual woes,Our mutual burdens bear,And often for each other flowsThe sympathizing tear.When we asunder part,It gives us inward pain;But we shall still be joined in heart,And hope to meet again.
Blest be the tie that bindsOur hearts in Christian love:The fellowship of kindred mindsIs like to that above.
Before our Father's throneWe pour our ardent prayers;Our fears, our hopes, our aims, are one,Our comforts and our cares.
We share our mutual woes,Our mutual burdens bear,And often for each other flowsThe sympathizing tear.
When we asunder part,It gives us inward pain;But we shall still be joined in heart,And hope to meet again.
It would be hard to find a member of a Protestant church in America, among the older denominations, who does not know these words, and is not accustomed to use them in response to the stimuli of kinship with other Protestant Christians.
The consciousness of kind is an awareness of differences and resemblances. It is a finding of one's self among those to whom one is like, and an aversion to those unto whom one is not like. Worship is an expression of this common likeness. It is an enjoyment of fellowship.
The experience of worship is impossible in an atmosphere of difference. This is a reason for the cleavage of denominations, and the splitting of congregations. Without this separating, men could not enjoy the uniting, and without the aversion, men could not taste the sweets of fellowship.
This brings us very near to the sacred experiences in which men find God. A very early chapter in the Bible describes God as the "Friend" of a man. In the succeeding pages he becomes the King, the Priest, the Prophet, and the Father of men. In every oneof them the mind of the worshiper has expressed a profound sense, that God is found by the soul in society. Herbert Spencer has insisted that all religion is ancestor worship, that is, it grows out of the family group.
Simmel teaches that religion is the resultant of the reactions of the individual with his group fellows, and with the group as a whole. Christian folk are accustomed to express this by calling one another "brothers" and "sisters," meaning clearly that religion is a social experience.
This is not the place for extended biblical interpretation, but I am convinced that the whole course of scripture will testify to this, that in the peaceful, continuing, social unities men have found God, and in the differences, in their group conflicts, in their wars, and in the oppositions to their enemies, there has been found no religious experience. That is, such conflict has intensified unity, and the resulting unity has been ever richer in religion: but the thoughts for God have come forth clothed always in terms and titles of fellowship, unity and kinship.
In country communities this principle explains the divisions and the unities of religious life. In many towns, the Presbyterian church, for instance, is the church of the old settler and the earlier farmers. A new denomination has come in with the tenants and the invaders. That is, men have found it impossible to worship in a constant experience of difference. It is true that their difference is an elementin their religion, because the consciousness of difference is an element in the consciousness of kind.
In the Southern States, the white slave-holders worshiped, before the war, in the same congregations with their negro slaves. They were conscious of the plantation group, and of the economic unity with their work-people. When emancipation came and the slaves were made free, they must needs worship apart; and today, throughout the whole South, the negro churches have been erected to express the consciousness of kind, both on the part of the white and of the black.
If this argument has force, it goes to prove that religion is, in a small community, the strongest organizing force. The seeking after God requires as a vehicle the consciousness of likeness and difference. It can only proceed along those lines.
The earnest desire of many common folk to know God is a working force, which follows the cleavage of social classification. The churches become expressions of social forms. In the country particularly, where life is simpler and changes are slower, the church becomes an almost infallible index of the social condition of the people.
The duty, then, of the religious worker, and the task of the prophet and the seer, is to enlarge the consciousness of kind. Worship is to be placed on a larger plane. Americans must be taught to see their unity with immigrants. Owners of land must be made to recognize that they are one with theirtenants. The employer must be shown that his alliances are with those who help him to get his living. At once, when this task is put before us, we see the futility of the ideals of our time. Church workers and other teachers have played up before the eyes of the people those ideals which separate men into artificial classes. The consciousness of kind has been a consciousness of money and consciousness of belonging to old families, or a consciousness of the ideals of higher education. A great many American families live in the ideal of sending their boys and girls to college. This leads them to feel a difference between themselves and the larger number of people who do not care for higher education, and who discover no energies in themselves that move on the path of learning. The result is that their worship is narrow; churches become culture clubs: the preachers are exponents of literature: the service of worship is a liturgy of esthetic pleasure.
The true consciousness of kind must be economic and social. There is no escape from this for religious people. They must go deep down to the unities with men who co-operate with them in getting a living. The Pittsburgh mill owner has no other unity by which he can find himself at one with his foreign born mill-hand, than the fact that he and the mill-hand are fellow workers in the mill.
What other bond of union is there between the farm landlord and the farm tenant? They have no common idealism. The one reads books, the otherdoes not. The one sends his son to college, the other sends his into the stable and the field. The one is enjoying a life of leisure and his hands are clean; the other sweats, saves, and produces, in soiled clothing, and with hard, coarse hands. They have only one basis of unity, namely, that they co-operate in tilling the soil, and in the producing of food and raw materials. The teacher, or preacher, who attempts in this case to escape the economic unity, will find no other.
The trouble with most of the ideals which express themselves in diversified worship, is that they are peculiar to the life of leisure, they are a part of "the leisure class standard." Many teachers and preachers reiterate similar demands which can only be responded to by people who do not have to work.
From this leisure class standard our ideals must be changed to the standard of work, and the man who has vision is he who shall see the economic, the industrial unities, and who with compelling voice, will call men together to worship in a new consciousness of kind.
Ministers in the country are feeling this very deeply. The pastor who ministers to a whole community, boasts of it. He realizes he is serving a true social unit. This is the joy of many country churches which might be named, and the lack of it is the blight of many other country communities. It must be clearly born in mind, however, that the church can not organize a unity that is apart fromthe life of men. Religion is the expression of social realities. There can be no "federation" of those who are not conscious of their likeness and of their resemblances. This means that the religious teaching of days to come must be a teaching of the real unities of mankind. For in these true bonds of union men are brought together. The efforts to assemble them in artificial bonds, however ideal, will be futile.
FOOTNOTES:[35]"Descriptive and Historical Sociology," by Prof. Franklin H. Giddings, p. 275.
[35]"Descriptive and Historical Sociology," by Prof. Franklin H. Giddings, p. 275.
[35]"Descriptive and Historical Sociology," by Prof. Franklin H. Giddings, p. 275.
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Abandoned country churches,126Absentee landlords,32-39Academy,—Old New England,25Addams, Jane,191Adult Bible Class,134Agee, Prof. Alva,105Agriculture, teaching of,167Amish,74Amusement, problem of,84Anabaptist,72Anderson, Wilbert L.,102Anti-Saloon League,183Apples, marketing of,175Augustine, Saint,82Austerity,57Bailey, L. H.,50"Bees",203Bellona, N. Y.,56Boll weevil,143Bone, R. E.,86Braddock, Rev. J. S.,58Breach of contract,174Breadwinner, type,113Butterfield, Kenyon L.,137Casselton, N. D.,42Centralized school,163Chaffee, farm,43Chester County, Pa.,124Chesterton, Gilbert K.,115Christmas play,203Church, Budget,138Envelope system,139Financial system,130Records,172Clark, John Bates,80,111College athletics,193Columbus, Christopher,112Community center,104Consciousness of kind,208,213Corn Clubs,206Country Fair, promoted,17Country Life Commission,171Cranberry, N. J., church at,27Crete, Nebraska,86Danish Folk Schools,52,169Delaware, produce exchanges,154Demonstration work,206Denmark,51,147Desmoulin,96Diminishing returns, law of,88,110Donation, system,27Dunkers,58,67Du Page Church,106Eliot, Ex-President of Harvard,137Endowment of churches,136Exploitation of land,32-33,123,124Family group,19Shrinkage of,124Farm laborers,22Federation of churches,135,209Foght, Harold W.,97,160Fourth of July celebration,205Galesburg, Ill.,201Galpin, Prof. C. J.,94Giddings, Prof. Franklin H.,208Gill, Rev. C. O.,195Gillette, Prof. John M.,188Gillin, Prof.,57,58,67Greeley, Horace,108Group system,10,11,12Grundtvig, Bishop,51,53,169Gulick, Dr. Luther H.,197Haggard, H. Rider,147Hanover, N. J.,156Hays, Willet M.,91Hernando, Mississippi,105Holidays, celebration of,204Homestead act,34Hood River Valley, Oregon, fruit growers,176Hormell, Dr. W. H.,88Illinois,126Survey of,190Immigrants, in country districts,123Indiana, survey of,190Ireland, Christian Brothers,52Co-operative organizations,147-151Country Life Movement,80John Swaney Consolidated School,165-166Kentucky, co-operative organizations,152Survey of,190Lancaster County, Pa.,57Land values,34Leadership,187Lewistown, Pa.,198McNab, Ill.,166McNutt, Rev. Matthew B.,86,106Marginal man,113Massachusetts communities,96Mennonites,72Middle Creek Church,58Minimum salary,161Missouri, survey of,190Money crop,95Mormons,57,62-78Morrison, Rev. T. Maxwell,56Mountain community,4Mountaineers,6,8,16New England Country Church Asso.,137New York Central R. R.,177Oberammergau,83Oberlin, John Frederick,14Oblong meeting,71,172Ohio, counties less productive,101Ottumwa, Iowa,88Over churching,26,145,146Palatinates,72Pastor, need of,13Passion Play,83Penn, William,72Penn Yan, N. Y.,40Pennsylvania Germans,57,62-78Pennsylvania, survey of,190Planters, south,18Playground,98Playground movement,134,196Plunkett, Sir Horace,51,147Polk, Rev. Samuel,54Poor, ministry to,115Protestantism,118Quaker Hill,70,94,155Quaker meeting, McNab,168Quakers,70,197,204Rankin, David,41Recreation, importance of,139,194Retired farmers,36-38Retirement from farm, process described,125Revivals,7,8,9Riis, Jacob,87Rock Creek, Ill.,156,164,205Ross, Prof. J. B.,2,21,29,32,184Rural evangelism,131Rural exodus,87,97Rural free delivery,128Sag Harbor, L. I.,201Sage, Mrs. Russell,201Schenck, Norman C.,4School, country,23,85,60,159Scientific farming,48Scotch-Irish,30,57,62-78Simmel,212Slave-holding churches,28Smith, Adam,5Smith, John,112Socialism,116Social service,110,XVISpencer, Herbert,212Store, country,22,94Sunday Schools,131,134Swaney, John,86Tardé, Gabriel,59Teachers, training of,161Team play, ethical value,99Telephone, rural,128,190Temperance movement,46,117,183Tenant farmers,35Tenants' lease,40Thompson, R. E.,65Theological seminaries,119-120Trolley, inter-urban,128Types, economic,3Utility, initial,108Marginal,109Van Alstyne, Edward,177Vote selling,179Washington County, Pa.,124Waterloo, Iowa, community church,68Wealth, conservation of,47West Nottingham, Md., church at,54Winnebago, Ill.,58Young Men's Christian Association,134,194Young People's Societies,28