OREGON FARMER 



119 



them with almost any brand they like to name. In fact, I think one 

 would have to look around a good deal in order to find a section of 

 country more thickly dotted with denominational colleges than is 

 the Willamette Valley. A study of the following chart of edu- 

 cational Institutions in Oregon will make this clear, besides setting 

 forth a bird's eye view of educational conditions throughout the 

 state. 



The Influence of The Church. 



Turning again to the table, "Social Statistics" (B) (table, page 117), 

 we notice the astounding fact that of 794 reports on the influence 

 of the rural church in Oregon, 663, or 86 per cent claim that the 

 church is gaining ground in its influence upon rural life. 



There are several reasons for this favorable report. In the first 

 place, rural Oregon has never been subjected to anything like the 

 amount of duplication of churches which disgraces the very name of 

 Christianity in many of the older states. In the second place, there 

 are few states where the average intelligence is higher. People in 

 Oregon are more prone to subject their convictions to the scrutiny 

 of reason, rather than take them ready made from others. Hence, 

 the religious crank with his manifold brands of salvation, like the 

 political spellbinder, the eloquent mouthpiece of the machine, has 

 never been taken so seriously in Oregon as in other states. 



In fact, we believe there is enough independence and intelligence 

 in Oregon to blaze the way for a new rural church. It shall be a 

 church in which service shall count instead of dogma, a church which 

 shall find in living problems an inspiration and a dynamic force 

 which stories of a dead past have long ceased to supply. 



Some beginnings of the new era are already to be discerned. 

 One of the most notable is the federation of three of the old time 

 denominations of the small town of Independence in a single church 

 corporation. Three weak competing churches united their forces, 

 and hired a good man to be their spiritual leader in a capacity which 

 is impossible for any paid advocate of a sect or creed. What Inde- 

 pendence has accomplished other rural communities can also do. 

 Few other movements could accomplish more for rural life than 

 church federation. 



SOCIAL STATISTICS C. 



