CHAPTER V. 



THE FUNCTION OF THE CHUKCH. 



The farmer is engaged in a struggle which is affecting 

 every situation in the country and every institution. It 

 is in this struggle that the farmer now needs religious 

 help. Shall the church give him in this crisis theo- 

 logical teaching only pure, it may be, as to its source 

 in the Word of God, but still purely theological ? Or 

 shall she, not turning aside from this, busy herself also 

 with all his varied interests, social, educational, recrea- 

 tional, and even economic ? What, in meeting such a 

 situation, is the function of the church ? 



In I^ew England there has been a clashing of policy 

 as well as of viewpoint upon this problem, between the 

 Evangelicals and the Liberal Christians. The Liberal 

 Movement stressed humanitarian types of uplift to such 

 a degree as to become a sociological rather than a reli- 

 gious movement for betterment. The Evangelicals 

 stressed the teaching of the Christian pulpit, depending 

 upon its fruits in personal character ; claiming that 

 Xew England, cradled in theology, had produced her 

 superb manhood in the past, with its outcome in civiliza- 

 tion, by means of her orthodoxy. Each side had its 

 limitation of view. Those who advocate reliance upon 

 pure theology overlook the fact that the Pilgrim Fathers 

 came to Xew England purposely to seek a new social 

 environment, and that this new environment gave an 



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