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Home Missions in Action
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Home Missions in Action
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Title: Home Missions In Action
Author: Edith H. Allen
Release Date: July, 2005 [EBook #8427] [Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule] [This file was
first posted on July 9, 2003]
Edition: 10
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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK HOME MISSIONS IN ACTION ***
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HOME MISSIONS IN ACTION
BY
EDITH H. ALLEN
To
MY FATHER A
Christian Patriot
FROM THE PUBLICATION COMMITTEE
Home Missions in Action
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The general topic for the text books for 1915-16, as first chosen by the "Committee of Twenty-eight," was
"The Church at Its Task." This committee is composed of representatives from the four missionary
organizations: the Home Missions Council; the Council of Women for Home Missions; the Conference of
Foreign Mission Boards and the Federation of Women's Boards of Foreign Missions.
The outbreak of the great war of the nations brought new duties and questions of adjustment to the Christian
church; the Committee has recognized this in changing the original topic to "The Church and the Nations."
This book is written from the standpoint of the words chosen as the key note for the year, "Thy kingdom
come; Thy will be done on earth." It recognizes the fact that the Kingdom cannot come to our land, or to the
world unless all social conditions are drawn within its scope; it emphasizes the desire of Home Missions and
the church to work toward this great end, and the recognition of their responsibility for its accomplishment.
But unless the nations of the world are trending toward the day when peace shall reign and hatred and strife
cease among men, these desires cannot be realized. With this in view the portions dealing with social
conditions and peace possibilities have been written.
That this book may reveal the far-reaching potentialities of Home Missions as a dynamic force for reclaiming,
educating, healing, and integrating our nation into a land over which the Christ shall reign and that from Him
it shall also draw its ideals and its power, is the hope and the prayer of the author and the Council of Women
for Home Missions.
CONTENTS
I. A NATIONAL FORCE
II. A RECLAIMING FORCE
III. AN EDUCATIVE FORCE
IV. A HEALING FORCE
V. AN INTEGRATING FORCE
VI. SOURCES OF POWER
I
A NATIONAL FORCE PRAYER FOR THE CHURCH
O God, we pray for thy Church, which is set to-day amid the perplexities of a changing order, and face to face
with a great new task. We remember with love the nurture she gave to our spiritual life in its infancy, the tasks
she set for our growing strength, the influence of the devoted hearts she gathers, the steadfast power for good
she has exerted. When we compare her with all other human institutions, we rejoice, for there is none like her.
But when we judge her by the mind of her Master, we bow in pity and contrition. Oh, baptize her afresh in the
life-giving spirit of Jesus! Grant her a new birth, though it be with the travail of repentance and humiliation.
Bestow upon her a more imperious responsiveness to duty, a swifter compassion with suffering, and an utter
loyalty to the will of God. Put upon her lips the ancient gospel of her Lord. Help her to proclaim boldly the
coming of the Kingdom of God and the doom of all that resist it. Fill her with the prophets' scorn of tyranny,
and with a Christ-like tenderness for the heavy-laden and down-trodden. Give her faith to espouse the cause of
the people, and in their hands that grope after freedom and light to recognize the bleeding hands of the Christ.
Bid her cease from seeking her own life, lest she lose it. Make her valiant to give up her life to humanity, that
like her crucified Lord she may mount by the path of the cross to a higher glory.
Home Missions in Action
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--Walter Rauschenbusch.
* * * * *
Home Missions may be defined as the out-reaching of the Christian church in America to those peoples and
places in our land beyond the immediate environs of the local church.
From the time the Pilgrim, the Dutch, the Cavalier stepped on these shores the church (and included in it
Home Missions) has exerted a most powerful influence upon the ideals and standards of life on this continent.
While shaping and moulding the thought and life of the people, it has itself developed a content and vision
infinitely greater, more inclusive, more of the spirit of the Christ's "I am come that ye might have life and
have it more abundantly," than was dreamed of in the days of its beginning.
"The hidden forces of national life are instinctive and unconscious. One cannot differentiate natural influences
so as to ascribe to each its value. The ideals of nations, like those of individuals, are derived from all the
concrete qualities of character." [Footnote: F. H. Giddings in "Democracy and Empire."] The ideals which are
a compelling force in our nation to-day cannot be ascribed to any one force, but are the result of all those
formative reactions which are the product of racial, economic, social, ethical and religious forces, the latter
being pre-eminently the most marked.
It will be remembered that into the new and harder life of the successive frontiers, Home Missions entered,
bringing a saving power, as well as one that softened and glorified the renunciations and sacrifices attendant
always upon frontier life.
Indeed, the most marked characteristics of our national life until recent years have been those born of contact
with frontier conditions--courage, discipline, an austere sense of duty, a passion for work, marvelous
practicality joined to a fundamental idealism and love of sentiment, an unconquerable hopefulness and an
innate kindness and personal helpfulness.
Of necessity the conditions and environs of the country have reacted upon the religious ideals and life of our
people. We can not enter into the fullest understanding of the present place and influence of Home Missions
as a National Force, or a study of its immediate future, without pausing to review the background of the past.
For we recognize that growth, organization and development are all functions of
time
.
The early fathers had no thought of founding a nation when they sought refuge and a new start on this
continent. Jamestown, New York, Plymouth and their outgrowing settlements were intensely individualistic.
They were the individual Cavalier, Hollander or Pilgrim, only in larger proportions, bearing all their
characteristics.
To appreciate the characteristics and spirit of these colonists, we must consider the special significance of the
age that gave them birth. They "were the children of a century in which the human spirit had a new birth in
energy of imagination, in faith in its powers to dare greatly and achieve greatly." [Footnote: Hamilton Wright
Mabie--American Ideals, Character and Life.]
They were inspired most strongly by religious aspirations, although combining with these impelling political
convictions. In the Puritan colony, "membership in the church for some time remained a qualification for
voting."
"In nearly every document which conveyed authority to discoverers, explorers, and settlers in the New World,
the Christian religion was recognized." [Footnote: Hamilton Wright Mabie--American Ideals, Character and
Life.]
Home Missions in Action
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Their faith was of heroic quality, of rock firmness; their obedience to duty as they saw it, almost absolute.
The Bible exerted a tremendous influence. It was not only their religious guide and teacher, but was also their
library, daily companion and for some time their only literature. It became wrought into the very fibre of their
thought.
This dominating religious attitude, while modified in the different types--the Friends, Huguenots,
Moravians--gave the impulses which have had so strong a formative influence upon the life of the nation.
Recognizing fully the incalculable value of this early religious contribution, we cannot fail also to realize the
limitations of the religious outlook of that period, and the effect of these limitations upon the social life of the
country. Seventeenth century religion laid its emphasis upon the subjective--upon definitions of religious
belief--and found expression in theological discussion and opinion. It concerned itself intensely with the
individual as regards his spiritual life, but took little or no account of the outward conditions that bear so
powerfully upon the inner life. Thus in its growth the church failed to exercise that commanding influence in
the redemption of society and the
forming
of social conditions which should have accompanied the preaching
of individual salvation.
It entered deeply, reverently, passionately into the spirit of the first commandment: "Thou shalt love the Lord
thy God with all thy heart and with all thy soul and with all thy might," but failed in holding with equal grasp
the second, "Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself."
Had the church, had Home Missions, entered fully into the spirit of this second commandment, its enormous
restraining, organizing, saving power would have contributed more fully to the
forming
of the community life
before it so desperately needed _re_forming--to dealing with those great fundamental conditions which have
led to the "submerged" of our civilization.
To-day we are coming to recognize the vital connection between spiritual regeneration and the bringing of the
Kingdom of God on Earth. Home Missions is essentially and radically concerned with both. Rev. David
Watson in his "Social Advance" says:
"Theology and sociology are closely kin and in a sense complementary. Theology deals with man's relation to
God, Sociology with man's relation to his fellows. The one is the science of God, the other is the science of
society.
"The goal of all real social advance, as of all Home Mission effort, should be the establishment of the
Kingdom of God on earth in all its gracious fullness; and the method fourfold, by spiritual dynamics (the
church and its Home Missions), moral culture, economic change and wise legislation."
First, the Gospel, with its message of individual salvation, and the Kingdom of God, this opening the way for
and bringing with it education and moral culture, and the control of economic forces by legislation.
"Only through the unified action of all these forces is continued progress assured."
The church has eagerly sought to comply with the first three requisites, but its failure to recognize the specific
influence it might exert along the lines of the economic and legislative have retarded mightily the better day in
this land and hindered the best and highest attainment of our democracy.
The concept of the Christian ideal to-day is that it shall save the individual, but also remove that which
produces crime and makes sin almost inevitable--in short, that it shall seek to redeem the environment as well
as the sinner, and give more wholesomeness, more fullness, more joy to life through redeeming its conditions,
as well as saving its soul.
Home Missions in Action
5
On the church and its outreaching Home Missions as the instrument for the Kingdom-progress, rests a heavy
responsibility in supplying that spiritual dynamic and inspiration which is back of all social upbuilding. It
must produce the men and women whose characters are such that in their attitude toward industry, labor,
legislation, in all their social capacities, they will seek to live Christ's social principle, "What ye would that
men should do to you, do ye even so to them," and to bring the Master's Beatitudes as a working principle into
life.
Before considering what we have left undone, let us review in outline the splendid record of Home Missions.
Since the early days when Roger Williams pressed into the wilderness of Rhode Island, the Christian preacher
and teacher have followed the advancing line of the successive frontiers--no hardship, no denial, no scarcity of
food, no privation, no want or cold so great that Home Missions hesitated to go, with its spiritual healing, its
community service, bringing the very heart of Christ's love and service into these new centers. When
adventurous home-seekers reached the Alleghanies, the Iowa Band soon followed. When the fate of the great
Northwest hung in the balance, a missionary statesman came to its saving.
When the frozen North called men with its lure of gold, an indomitable missionary led in all that made for the
better life. When a devastating war had spent its fury and a helpless Africa, bound by heaviest chains of
ignorance and superstition, waited, Home Missions responded.
When the deposed Red brother suffered every form of grievous wrong, Home Missions brought him brotherly
love and helped him find the Jesus Road. When the alien stood bewildered in our midst, Home Missions gave
him guidance. When the dumb appeal of the isolated mountaineers was realized, Home Missions followed the
lonely mountain trail. To the mines and the lumber camps, to the ancient Spanish folk of our continent, to
those deluded by the false Prophet--to all of these Home Missions has carried its threefold ministry of saving,
teaching and training.
Home Missions counts its lives laid down for the Christ on a hundred fields. No pen can tell of the magnitude
of its influence on our national life. Its little enterprises are now the great, strong city churches of Nebraska,
Kansas, California, Oregon, in fact of all the States.
It was a Congregational pastor, Rev. Jeremiah Porter, who preached the first sermon on Lake Michigan, as he
held a service in the carpenter shop of Fort Dearborn in 1833. The population of what afterward became the
city of Chicago then numbered three hundred. As a result of the efforts of Rev. Mr. Porter, who organized the
first Presbyterian church in the city of Chicago while working also for the Congregational church, many of the
present centers of Christian influence were instituted in that city.
It is instructive to note the returns from one Home Mission enterprise. On the Pacific coast the Congregational
Home Missionary Society in sixty-two years spent $1,646,000. In thirty-two years the churches thus founded
sent $864,000 to carry Christ's message to foreign countries, and $302,000 through other Congregational
agencies for uplift in this country. This was given in addition to all the local philanthropies and social service
rendered in their own communities by these organizations.
The history of the first Presbyterian Church of Portland, Oregon, is one of the outstanding illustrations of the
fruitfulness of Home Mission work. "This church was organized on January first, 1854, with ten members. It
was a strictly Home Mission work, dependent upon the Home Board for its existence. When it was
reorganized in 1860 it had but seventeen members, and they were unable to pay the salary.
"During the next four years it received aid from the Board of Home Missions to the amount of eleven hundred
dollars. Then it undertook self-support. It has been blessed in having a line of far-seeing pastors who have led
it on from strength to strength.
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