The Rural Church

1915

The Farmers The Custodians of the Nation's Morality

Co-operation of Church, School and Press Essential to Community Building

By Peter Radford
Lecturer National Farmers' Union

The church, the press and the school form a triple alliance of progress that guides the destiny of every community, state and nation. Without them civilization would wither and die and through them life may attain its greatest blessing, power and knowledge. The farmers of this nation are greatly indebted to this social triumvirate for their uplifting influence, and on behalf of the American plowmen I want to thank those engaged in these high callings for their able and efficient service, and I shall offer to the press a series of articles on co-operation between these important influences and the farmers in the hope of increasing the efficiency of all by mutual understanding and organized effort. We will take up, first, the rural church.

The Farmers Are Great Church Builders.

The American farmer is the greatest church builder the world has ever known. He is the custodian of the nation's morality; upon his shoulders rests the "ark of the covenant" and he is more responsive to religious influences than any other class of citizenship.

The farmers of this nation have built 120,000 churches at a cost of $750,000,000, and the annual contribution of the nation toward all church institutions approximates $200,000,000 per annum. The farmers of the United States build 22 churches per day. There are 20,000,000 rural church communicants on the farm, and 54 per cent of the total membership of all churches reside in the country.

The farm is the power-house of all progress and the birthplace of all that is noble. The Garden of Eden was in the country and the man who would get close to God must first get close to nature.

The Functions of a Rural Church.

If the rural churches today are going to render a service which this age demands, there must be co-operation between the religious, social and economic life of the community.

The church to attain its fullest measure of success must enrich the lives of the people in the community it serves; it must build character; develop thought and increase the efficiency of human life, it must serve the social, business and intellectual, as well as the spiritual and moral side of life. If religion does not make a man more capable, more useful and more just, what good is it? We want a practical religion, one we can live by and farm by, as well as die by.

Fewer and Better Churches.

Blessed is that rural community which has but one place of worship. While competition is the life of trade, it is death to the rural church and moral starvation to the community. Petty sectarianism is a scourge that blights the life, and the church prejudice saps the vitality, of many communities. An over-churched community is a crime against religion, a serious handicap to society and a useless tax upon agriculture.

While denominations are essential and church pride commendable, the high teaching of universal Christianity must prevail if the rural church is to fulfill its mission to agriculture.

We frequently have three or four churches in a community which is not able to adequately support one. Small congregations attend services once a month and all fail to perform the religious functions of the community. The division of religious forces and the breaking into fragments of moral efforts is ofttimes little less than a calamity and defeats the very purpose they seek to promote.

The evils of too many churches can be minimized by cooperation. The social and economic life of a rural community are respective units and cannot be successfully divided by denominational lines, and the churches can only occupy this important field by co-operation and co-ordination.

The efficient country church will definitely serve its community by leading in all worthy efforts at community building, in uniting the people in all co-operative endeavors for the general welfare of the community and in arousing a real love for country life and loyalty to the country home and these results can only be successfully accomplished by the united effort of the press, the school, the church and farmers.