SOCIAL PROBLEMS OF AMERICAN FARMERS 759 



Furthermore, there is supreme necessity for adding dignity to the 

 country parish. Too often at present the rural parish is regarded 

 either as a convenient laboratory for the clerical novice, or as an 

 asylum for the decrepit or inefficient. The country parish must be 

 a parish for our ablest and strongest. The ministry of the most 

 Christlike must be to the hill-towns of Galilee as well as to Jerusa- 

 lem. 



There is still another truth that the country church cannot afford 

 to ignore. The rural church question is peculiarly interwoven with 

 the industrial and social problems of the farm. A declining agri- 

 culture cannot foster a growing church. An active church can 

 render especially strong service to a farm community, in its influence 

 upon the religious life, the home life, the educational life, the social 

 life, and even upon the industrial life. Nowhere else are these 

 various phases of society's activities so fully members one of another 

 as in the country. The country church should cooperate with other 

 rural social agencies. This means that the country pastor should 

 assume a certain leadership in movements for rural progress. He is 

 splendidly fitted, by the nature of his work and by his position in the 

 community, to cooperate with earnest farmers for the social and 

 economic, as well as the moral and spiritual, upbuilding of the farm 

 community. But he must know the farm problem. Here is an 

 opportunity for theological seminaries: let them make rural sociology 

 a required subject. And, better, here is a magnificent field of labor 

 for the right kind of young men. The country pastorate may thus 

 prove to be, as it ought to be, a place of honor and rare privilege. 

 In any event, the country church, to render its proper service, not 

 alone must minister to the individual soul, but must throw itself into 

 the struggle for rural betterment, must help solve the farm problem. 



Federation of Forces 



The suggestion that the country church should ally itself with 

 other agencies of rural progress may be carried a step farther. 

 Rural social forces should be federated. The object of such federa- 

 tion is to emphasize the real nature of the farm problem, to interest 

 many people in its solution, and to secure the cooperation of the 

 various rural social agencies, each of which has its sphere, but also its 

 limitations. The method of federation is to bring together, for con- 

 ference and for active work, farmers, especially representatives of 

 farmers' organizations, agricultural educators, rural school-teachers 

 and supervisors, country clergymen, country editors, in fact, all who 

 have a genuine interest in the farm problem. Thus will come 

 clearer views of the questions at issue, broader plans for reform, 

 greater incentive to action, and more rapid progress. 



