The Evolution of the Country Community: A Study in Religious Sociology — John Shaqi
The Evolution of the Country Community: A Study in Religious SociologyWilson, Warren H. (Warren Hugh)
Religion
The Evolution of the Country Community: A Study in Religious Sociology
Wilson, Warren H. (Warren Hugh)
Christian sociology; Country life
The communities themselves in the country differ widely, even in
conformity to given types, and when all is said by the general student,
the pastor has the knowledge of his own community. It belongs peculiarly
to him. No one else can ever know it and there are no two communities
alike. In the intense localism of a community, its religious history is
hidden away and its future is involved. The man who shall touch the
springs of the community's life must know these local conditions with
the intimate detail which only he commands who daily goes up and down
its paths. This man is the pastor. Except the country physician, no
other living man is such an observer as he.
The end of the pioneer days means, therefore, to religious people, the
establishment of the pastorate. The religious leader for the pioneer was
the preacher, but the community which clings to preaching as a
satisfactory and final religious ministry is retrograde. In this
retarding of religious progress is the secret of the decline of many
communities. The great work of ministering to them is in supplanting the
preacher, who renders but a fractional service to the people, by a
pastor whose preaching is an announcement of the varied ministry in
which he serves as the curé of souls.
The pioneer days are gone. Only in the Southern Appalachian region are
there arrested communities in which, in our time, the ways of our
American ancestors are seen. The community builder cannot change the
type of his people. He can only wait for the change, and enable his
people to conform to the new type. For this process new industries, new
ways of getting a living are necessary. The teacher or pastor can do
something to guide his people in the selection of constructive instead
of destructive industry.
In East Tennessee and in the mountain counties of North Carolina
lumbering industries are for the time being employing the people. The
result will be a deeper impoverishment; for the timber is the people's
greatest source of actual and potential wealth. The leaders of the
mountain people should teach reforestation with a view to maintaining
the people's future wealth.
In a mountain county of Kentucky a minister seeing that his people
needed a new economic life, before they could receive the religious life
of the new type, organized an annual county fair. To this he brought,
with the help of outside friends, a breed of hogs better than his
mountain people knew. He cultivated competition in local industries,
weaving and cooking; and started his people on the path of economic
success of a new type.
In conclusion, the pioneer was individualistic and emotional. These
traits were caused by his economic experience. While that experience
lasted, he could be made no other sort of man than this. To this type
his home and his business life and his church conformed. Within these
characteristics the efficiency of his social life was to be found.
FOOTNOTES:
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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