One half of the rural churches of the country make an annual gain in membership of as much as 10 per cent. In striking contrast to this churchless seventh of the country, are the other six sevenths of rural America, many of them so overchurched that they are crying out for relief from the burdens the churches are laying upon them. There are ten times as many churches for every thousand persons in some of the rural districts of the United States as there are in New York City. Yet the percentage of attendance for every thousand persons is slightly lower in these rural sections than it is even in New York. Obviously, such a showing indicates a startling lack of system in the distribution of rural churches, a woeful waste of the religious potentialities of the country. Recently, a thorough survey of the rural church problem of the United States was made for the first time in the history of the country, under the direction of H. N. Morse and Edmund de S. Brunner, of the Institute of Social and Religious Research, of New York. Some of the statistics obtained by them are presented in the foregoing paragraphs. These facts, of course, offer a severe shock to those who have the little white church of the countryside enshrined in memory along with the little red school-house. We have fallen into the rut of taking it for granted that our country churches not only keep pace with the best religious life of the nation, but even stay a step or two in advance, if not in theology, at least in interest in godly things and in piety. We have come to think of country folk as the true church-goers of the United States. To this sentimental point of view the facts stated offer a true affront. _Fewer Church-goers_ There are to-day approximately 101,000 rural churches in the United States. A long time ago, when there were only a hundred such churches, virtually the entire country population attended them. Some time later, when there were a thousand churches of the kind, the average of attendance was still exceedingly high. But of recent years the percentage of rural church-goers has almost seemed to be in an inverse ratio to the increase in churches. One out of every five is not a showing that would have brought joy to the Puritan Fathers. What is the reason for this precarious situation in the rural churches of our nation? Does it indicate that our country population is made up of a less God-fearing folk than in former years? Does it demonstrate that religion is less near to the hearts of the farm workers of the United States than is true of its city dwellers? Or are these conditions the logical outgrowth of a faulty system, the inevitable result of a church distribution spiritually and economically unsound?