UNITED STATES CHURCHES 731 



in Educational Review, December 1912; C. H. Robison, Agricultural Instruction in the Public 

 High Schools of the United States (New York, 1911). SANITATION AND STUDY OF BACKWARD 

 CHILDREN: Russell Sage Foundation, What American Cities are Doing for the Health of School 

 Children (New York, 1911); Walter S. Cornell, Health and Medical Inspection (Philadelphia, 

 1912) and William Hawley Smith, All the Children of all the People (New York, 1912). 



(RICHARD WEBSTER.) 



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CHURCHES AND DENOMINATIONAL STATISTICS 



The most marked contemporary tendency among the religious bodies in the United 

 States, particularly those ranking as Evangelical Christian, is that toward co-operation, 

 federation and unity. Churches of similar faith are drawing closer to one another, 

 and while they do not surrender that which is peculiar to each in doctrine, polity, 

 discipline and method, they do emphasise their points of agreement and insist above 

 all that they are engaged in a common task, that this common task is immense in ex- 

 tent and importance and that it cannot be accomplished except by most strenuous 

 and united effort. The field of this effort is not only the United States and its colonies, 

 but the entire world; to the leaders it is one and all-embracing. But, for convenience, 

 we may distinguish between the work at home, or home missions, and the work in the 

 rest of the world, or foreign missions. 



The conditions in the foreign field present a problem so stupendous that the effort of 

 individual denominations appears utterly inadequate and inefficient, and the logic of the 

 situation drives the missionary societies to co-operation and combination. The work has 

 gradually broadened in scope so that while evangelistic effort has increased, educational, 

 publication, hospital, and industrial institutions have multiplied in number and importance. 

 The demands from Asia for a western system of education and other adjuncts of Christian 

 civilisation bear heavily and persistently upon the minds and hearts alike of the missionaries 

 and of the directors at home; the hundreds of millions of non-Christian peoples appear to be 

 drifting from the moorings of their ancient religions, and "immediate urgency" everywhere 

 faces society and worker. Therefore universities and colleges, publishing houses, hospitals, 

 etc., have become union organisations, with from two to half a dozen different denominations 

 supporting and conducting each. Moreover by common agreement the native Church, 

 when it shall become autonomous and independent of the societies, is not to reproduce all 

 the denominational divisions of America and Europe, but is to have for its ideal complete 

 Christian unity. So, following the example in Japan, half a dozen Presbyterian and Re- 

 formed bodies have united their mission churches into one organisation in India and China, 

 and the three branches of the Anglican Communion operating in China have done likewise. 

 In West China bodies as diverse as Baptists, Friends and Methodists have come to an agree- 

 ment to create an undivided comprehensive native Christian Church. The World Mission- 

 ary Conference at Edinburgh in 1910, representing all Protestant bodies, became the mount 

 of vision, so to speak, for an exhaustive survey of conditions in the non-Christian world, for 

 the purpose of sounding an advance for the missionary forces of all Protestantism. A 

 Continuation Commission, serving for all, is studying the problem with the view of securing 

 a more perfect comity, co-operation and unity, and a more adequate occupancy of the whole 

 field and of strategic centres. A considerable saving in means and effort has resulted, and 

 combination has increased efficiency and power many fold. This economy in expenditure 

 has not reacted in smaller contributions by the American home churches for foreign missions; 

 but the aggregate becomes constantly larger, reaching in 1912 nearly $15,000,000 for the 

 United States and Canada alone, about a half of the entire income from all countries. 



The missionary problem in the United States appears from the evangelical point of view 

 to be quite as important and urgent as that in the rest of the countries of the world. The 

 coming to America of a vast stream of immigration, approximating a million souls a year, of 

 whom probably a minority only may be regarded as professing any form of the Christian 

 faith, makes a moving demand upon all the denominations the Jewish, to care for those of 

 their own religion, the Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox, to meet the needs of the 

 multitudes of the Latin and Greek rites, and the Lutheran and Reformed, to provide for 

 those adhering to the Augsburg and Heidelberg Confessions. Great numbers of immigrants 

 have practically no religion, and Protestant missionaries are endeavouring to reach these in 

 particular. While most of the newcomers are drawn to the cities, vast numbers of Italians, 

 Poles, Hungarians, Slavs and Greeks find their way into the smaller cities and towns, and 

 even into villages. The service to be given, therefore, is extensive as to territory and num- 

 bers, and comprehensive as to language. Add to this foreign-speaking conglomerate the 

 pioneers in newly-settled sections, the negroes and the Indians, and the inhabitants of those 

 older rural parishes which are weakened by the migration to cities, and the Churches feel 

 that an extraordinary task confronts them. Combination of Protestant home missionary 

 societies in a Council for conference, co-operation and united action, as far as possible, is the 



