Chapter Four THE ORGANS OF CHRISTIAN RURAL PROGRESS The Christian spirit will find an outlet in those social institutions and agencies that men have organized. An institution is a group of people who for certain definite ends agree to act together. If people are to exhibit the Christian spirit in their multifarious dealings with one another, they can do it mainly as these so-called social institutions or agencies act in a Christian way and get results that are essentially Christian. It is just as important that schools and colleges shall minister to a Christian civilization as it is that the church shall do this. We cannot have a pagan system of education in a civilization that we are trying to make fully Christian. I do not argue here for propaganda concerning the teaching of religion in our public schools, and certainly I do not want to rouse sectarian differences of opinion on this point. But we have grown too much accustomed to think that nothing is Christian unless it bears the form and is carried by the ritual of the Christian Church. What we want in all our life is an exhibition of the Christian spirit and a permeation of group activities of all sorts with the Christian ideal. We cannot here detail the ways in which our public education in America may be made fully Christian, is indeed already to a large extent Christian. For there are two great organs of society that must be discussed, the farmers' organization and the Church. However, before passing on to those items, let me mention two other matters of some importance. 1. Farmers need their own institutions; otherwise the farmers become merely the fringe of the urban groups. The country church is profoundly affected by the advent of the automobile, and it has even been assumed in some quarters that the country people will desert the church of the open country and attend, if they attend at all, the church of the neighboring village or city. If this is in any large sense a sure tendency, it means not alone the downfall of the country church, but the practical anni |