Reformers and the Rural Church, 1900-1950

Abstract

As the twentieth century dawned, some Americans concluded that the rural countryside was in crisis. Social and economic institutions were rapidly changing and, many feared, dying. A first sign of change was the large rural-to-urban population shift as millions of Americans voted with their feet in favor of city, rather than farm and village, life, leaving behind isolated farmhouses, inward looking villages, and abandoned schools, churches, and general stores. Attempting to study and to ameliorate the negative consequences of rapid city growth, most Progressive Era reformers concentrated their prodigious energies and talents on the receiving end of the rural-to-urban population shift. But by the end of the first decade of the new century, there was also underway a movement to focus reform attention on the consequences of change for rural America. An analysis of the movement to diagnose rural problems, particularly for the churches, illuminates more clearly the orientations and perceptions of the reformers themselves than the problems of the rural people they studied so intently.1 Two institutions attracted the primary attention of rural reformers-the school and the church. Both were perceived as anchors of community life, providing training and socialization for the young and a sense of stability, tradition, and community definition for adults. Rural schools changed more rapidly than churches, but both lagged far behind their urban counterparts in adjusting to the conditions of life in modern America. Standing resolutely on the hillsides, snuggled in the vales, and nestled along the village streets, rural schools and churches evolved from proud symbols of community progress and vitality in the early nineteenth century to beleaguered, dying, and dead institutions by the early twentieth century.2