Springfield Weekly Republican

RURAL CHURCH UNION

A counterpart to the familiar overlapping of churches in small rural communities of the United States and Canada is to be found in England, where a movement has been undertaken with the object of forming a United Free church. In this matter all the free churches are co-operating, relying, in part, no doubt, on their sense of unity through opposition to the established church. In Canada an amalgamation of the Methodist, Presbyterian and Congregational churches is at present only a short way from being accomplished. In many rural communities of the United States attempts have been made to combine the energies of a few struggling societies. The movement is gaining ground.

"Overlapping," as an English nonconformist well says, "simply takes the heart out of hundreds of country pastors, and reduces church life to a constant struggle to make two ends meet." Possibly the absence of an established church has allowed antagonisms to flourish between the American denominations in the past in a way not found in the mother country, but old prejudices have largely vanished as a new and more liberal spirit has developed and to-day very few persons care more for the strength and prestige of their denomination than they do for the success of Christian work.

At the same time the denominational organizations must be preserved for the sake of administrative machinery, and any losses in numbers, either of constituent churches or of members, is naturally not welcomed. The work, therefore, of rural consolidation, in which there is still a great deal to be done in the United States, needs to be undertaken with a determination to preserve the relative strength of each denomination. It is a question which requires broad thinking and mutual courtesies, and it is a question of importance to the whole community.

The question of recruiting the ministry, for one thing, is not unrelated to it. Fewer rural churches will mean greater financial strength in the churches that remain, with the prospect that a minister will be decently paid, and, as all recognize, the adequate remuneration of clergymen is necessary at this time to insure that the quality of the pulpit shall be maintained. A young man without independent means cannot in many cases be expected to enter the ministry if he knows that he will not receive sufficient pay to support himself and his family. The recent indorsement of the plan of union by the British free church council is a further triumph for a wise principle, although it may take English nonconformists some years to hit upon a workable plan.