Did you ever happen to know the officials at the head of a Protestant church body, either national or state? Did you ever know the persons who distribute home-mission money after it is once collected? Did you ever get a glimpse of the inside? Well, if so, then you know how intensely human this situation is. You know how complex are the forces that operate, how like politics are the powers behind the locked doors. You know then that when you try to track this sinner, you can’t find him. Nobody does the thing. Nobody does anything. Nobody is to blame. The Christian leaders are not leading on such matters. They are fighting the individual sins of the people. What would America think of a great Christian leader who should come out and insist that Christian churches ought to love, respect, defer to other Christian churches? What a stir in Christendom it would make for a great man carrying his own church with him, let us say, to go up and down the land preaching that membership in one Christian church should thereby make us members in all Christian churches; preaching that we should discount all the differences among Christian churches and love all Christian churches for their likenesses? Look at this straw: In Canada an outstanding movement is nearing completion to unite organically three great Protestant bodies, affecting more than three quarters of a million of church members. The daily press recently in explanation of the union, carried this item: “The Union had its origin in the conviction that many separate churches of each denomination, especially in the rural districts, were handicapped in limited membership and were unable to maintain properly separate buildings and ministers. It is therefore a part of a tendency in many other countries to submerge religious differences in an effort at wider and more effective service.” This looks on the horizon like the peep of dawn of a new Christian day--and what a dawn for the rural community that would be! But--lest we be too sanguine--that dawn has some climb to make yet. Has not the Home Mission Council of the Federal Council of Churches in America put into practice on the Western frontier for several years principles of denominational courtesy? Have not the phrases of their documents on “Overchurching,” “Underchurching,” and “Wasteful Competition” seeped very generally throughout the settled portions of the United States, as well as into the frontier? Have not the Foreign Mission Boards of the various denominations for years gained conspicuously the confidence of their laymen by the intelligent distribution of territory among the missions of different church bodies abroad? The fact is and must be reckoned with that all the words and phrases and ideas and logic on this subject, pro and con, have been bandied about until they are almost threadbare. The will to do, however, is still very stubborn in old, established communities. CHAPTER VI