THE SOCIAL SIDE OF FARM LIFE 399 



if not of religion, in the open country, startled church leaders. 

 So earnest has been the endeavor to meet the rural church 

 problem that the several national religious bodies have created 

 a department of church and country life, with a secretary or 

 superintendent. A staff of rural church thinkers has been 

 formed. Very positive plans to study the country church, 

 to reparish the farm population, to provide noble church edifices 

 and comfortable parsonages, to organize church congregations 

 for social service as well as for social religion have been set 

 forth. The auxiliary societies of the Y. M. C. A. and Y. W. C. A. 

 have undertaken the work of training for rural leadership in 

 county after county. The Federal Council of the Churches of 

 Christ in America has its commission of the church and country 

 life, which is entering upon a vast plan in connection with the 

 Interchurch World Movement to survey the rural churches of 

 America. 



No other type of farm institution has displayed so patently 

 as the church the maladjustments of human life on the farm 

 under the stress of a national tide flowing cityward. It is not 

 strange, therefore, that the first questions were about the decay 

 of the rural church. Not strange that all sorts of proposals 

 and remedies have been made to improve the condition of 

 country churches. 



An important problem of the church for farmers is un- 

 doubtedly connected with the question of permanent agricul- 

 tural population groups. A church in order to function must be 

 in a natural population group. But a far deeper problem 

 than this presents itself. Churches in modern times must 

 reach a certain minimum strength in order to succeed at all. 

 This minimum strength is at present frequently never reached 

 by individual churches. How to guarantee the irreducible 

 minimum strength to each country church amounts to an 

 enigma. In solving this problem, moreover, some arrangement 

 must be arrived at among the national religious bodies by which 

 a process of give and take, carried out with scientific inter- 

 change, shall enable these country churches to come up to 

 standard membership. There are many indications that the 



