USA > Maine > Lincoln County > Waldoboro > History of old Broad Bay and Waldoboro, Volume 2 > Part 56
Note: The text from this book was generated using artificial intelligence so there may be some errors. The full pages can be found on Archive.org (link on the Part 1 page).
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 | Part 11 | Part 12 | Part 13 | Part 14 | Part 15 | Part 16 | Part 17 | Part 18 | Part 19 | Part 20 | Part 21 | Part 22 | Part 23 | Part 24 | Part 25 | Part 26 | Part 27 | Part 28 | Part 29 | Part 30 | Part 31 | Part 32 | Part 33 | Part 34 | Part 35 | Part 36 | Part 37 | Part 38 | Part 39 | Part 40 | Part 41 | Part 42 | Part 43 | Part 44 | Part 45 | Part 46 | Part 47 | Part 48 | Part 49 | Part 50 | Part 51 | Part 52 | Part 53 | Part 54 | Part 55 | Part 56 | Part 57 | Part 58 | Part 59 | Part 60
Heaven chased them forth to keep its beauty from impair; And the deep Hell receives them not . . Report of them the world permits not to exist; Mercy and Justice disdain them;
Let us not speak of them; but look, and pass.
III
In the year 1950 the schools of the town have emerged from an eclipse of two centuries. In the earlier chapters of this history there has been traced in concrete detail that unhappy sequence of events which over the decades slowly but increasingly immersed the common life in a fog of ignorance and illiteracy. This dark pall has been thinning out during the last century, but it has not entirely disappeared, and still casts something of its long shadow into the present. This is a condition of which few are conscious, because the effects of this ancient blackness still reach into the
503
In the Year 1950
present in forms that are subtle and indistinct but none the less pervasive. They prompt our prejudice; they lead us into the mis- calculations of bigotry and ignorance; they color our attitudes on questions of progress and public weal; they move us to turn aside in anger from constructive and valid criticism, and they move us to support short-sighted policies. Though few would admit it they are still latent and at times potent. Against this background, which is a legacy of our past, the present stands out with a brighter promise.
Education is fundamentally a process of change and human improvement. We start life with no knowledge or experience. What we become is conditioned by two factors: heredity and environment. About heredity we can do little, and we shall do no more here than to say that intelligence is an inherited trait. Gen- erations of intermarriage and interbreeding in the earlier decades have not exactly conduced to an enriched biological heritage. About this we can do nothing, since we have to take ourselves as we find ourselves.
The environmental factor in education is the only one subject to human control. This we can break down into the general social milieu, the home environment, and the school. As an educational force the social milieu is all-pervasive. With the decay of the ancestral order in the late nineteenth century, largely induced under the pressures of science against the long-established moral bastions of mankind, there came into being new and decidedly looser norms of social behavior, relaxing and dissolving the older moral scruples, standards, and inhibitions. Under the colorful allurements of commercial advertising, the cheap and shameless panderings of the comics, the sex movies and novels, the social order has moved along generally in the direction of moral anarchy. Since behavior patterns and ideals are highly contagious, this shift in moral emphasis has bitten into the older standards of decency with the force of a virulent corrosive, and wields its influence against the best in the life of every child and adult. It invades the home, creating tension between parents and children, and vitiating the influence of those interested in the function of the family as a necessary part of the child's training.
This is not the sole effect of this change in outlook, for in many cases it is just as demoralizing in the life of the parent as in that of the child, and through both its influence reaches potently into the schools and there sets up its brick wall of resistance to the more constructive program of education and the efforts of teachers. This very obviously is an evil against which no town or home can completely quarantine itself, and one that must be com- bated on a national front, for it represents a nationwide condition.
504
HISTORY OF OLD BROAD BAY AND WALDOBORO
Any survey of education in the town in the year 1950 must, perforce, center mainly on the school and the home. We may feel with reasonable justice and pride that the schools in the town have never been better, while on the other hand the conclusion is inescapable that as instruments of education there are homes which have never been weaker. In the face of such an unpleasant gen- eralization one should gratefully concede exceptions, homes which struggle sincerely with the educational problem and which in some cases are brilliantly successful. But by and large this side of the ledger is too deep in the red. This condition can, perhaps, be most clearly realized by effecting a contrast of the Waldoboro home of a half century ago with that of the present day.
In the year 1900 or thereabout most of the children of the town lived in homes where they knew the discipline of obedience, cooperation, and physical labor. They dressed plainly, comforta- bly, economically, and were schooled to do without; they were thoroughly grounded in the moral outlook and religious convic- tions of that period; around the home strong taboos were incul- cated against waste, tobacco, liquor, and the immoralities of sex; there were few children on the streets at night or in those loung- ing and loafing places frequented by the rougher village char- acters; the will of the parent was accepted as law; church and Sunday school were a part of the weekly routine; in the day school the teacher was usually right and the pupil usually wrong; a thrashing by the teacher ofttimes meant another on arrival home; in the evening the preparation of school work was generally man- datory; the diversions of leisure were home games and the reading of books; a high valuation was set on education at school even by the more limited parents, and the deficiencies in instruction were more than made up by the industry of the pupils, who in their schoolwork were competitive and ambitious. All in all, the atmos- phere was puritanic and the end result was usually a stable and disciplined boy or girl.
In the half century which has since elapsed home life has undergone a radical change. Discipline has relaxed and in too many homes the will of the child is stronger than that of the parent; parental responsibility in education has been transferred in too large a measure to the school; reading is a diversion of the past and is becoming a lost art; smoking by teen-agers is rather general, and drinking is not uncommon; sex inhibitions are in a state of collapse, and the "must" marriages of those in their teens has become a matter of more than passing comment; language between the sexes is both profane and coarse; manners are too crude and good manners too infrequently practiced; ambition in the mass fails too frequently to reach beyond a car on the highway and such jobs as chance and accident may provide. For most of the
505
In the Year 1950
younger generation education stops at the statutory state limit or on graduation from high school, and is too frequently a matter of mere routine, of being exposed to so and so many years of school- ing. There is too little intellectual curiosity and community ideal- ism; pride and civic-mindedness among the young is almost an undeveloped social area.
This half-century contrast is a rather unpleasant one, mitigated as it were by the realization that the trends affecting us are those affecting in varying degree every community in the United States. In the year 1950 there are, however, real signs of progress and promise. In 1900 our high school was attended largely by village pupils, and its graduating classes ranged in number from six to a dozen, while today the school is filled by pupils from every section of the town, and those not spending some time in the school are definitely exceptions. Earlier in this survey the fact was empha- sized that our schools have never been better. Of none is this truer than the high school which, in the current year, is staffed by eight teachers of exceptional social and personal fitness. These consti- tute the strongest deterrent in the contemporary picture against current teen-age trends, for they accept the task of educating the whole boy and the whole girl not only in subject fields but in the areas of manners, morals, and good taste - areas in which the family as a training agent sometimes functions rather lamely.
Another promising aspect of the present picture is that the local high school has reached college preparatory status. This is evidence of a school far stronger than that of 1900. To revert again to our contrast with that year we recall that in the period from 1900 to 1910, five boys went to college from Waldoboro - to Bowdoin and Harvard. In each case, they were compelled to attend schools out of town for their preparation. In the present, boys and girls go to college every year from the local school, and in the last decade a number of them have broken through the higher standards of admission by which such institutions as Har- vard, Dartmouth, Bowdoin, and Williams are fenced around. This in itself is prima facie evidence that where the boy or girl is pos- sessed of good native aptitude, and does his or her sincere and industrious best, the school is equal to the task of preparing stu- dents for colleges of top-grade requirements. This fact in itself furnishes irrefutable evidence that the school has reached a high level of excellence.
The last and one of the most important facets of the educa- tional situation to be noted here is to be found in the fact that in the past few years the citizens of the town have allotted without question such monies for the support of education as the Board has asked. If such support continues and if parents as a whole can be interested in constructive cooperation with their school, the
:
506
HISTORY OF OLD BROAD BAY AND WALDOBORO
town in a single generation can go far in the direction of over- coming the lag of indifference and inertia which from the begin- ning of its history has been a ball and chain on its spiritual progress.
IV
The power of contrasts can nowhere be sensed more sharply than in the religious life of the town. Two centuries ago, after the simple basic needs of food, clothing, and shelter, the greatest hunger of the people was for the mercy and love of God. On the Sabbath all save those stricken by illness and infirmity could be found at their worship in the churches. A century ago 142 new members, more than the total membership today of any commun- ion in the town, were admitted in the ministry of a single pastor to one of the village churches. In the year 1950 the man, woman, or child who devotes any part of the Sabbath to the worship of God in the churches is a curious exception. Statistically a census of church attendance shows that these exceptions are about one in every ten in the town's population. The significance of this figure becomes apparent when compared with nationwide church attendance of Protestants in the United States, where a survey11 shows thirty-two per cent who never attend church, forty-three per cent who attend regularly and twenty-five per cent who are weekly church goers. Using the very lowest per cent of church attendance for purposes of comparison, it becomes clear that Wal- doboro with its one in ten deviates so far from the national averages of one in four as to become an exceptional phenomenon.
In the face of such facts it is difficult to escape the conclusion that over the more recent decades the town has been slowly becoming secularized. In fact, in the present it has reached the point where its population is only ten per cent "professed" Chris- tian. Lest such a condition be made the basis of invidious charges it should be noted that throughout its long past there has been a slow infiltration of Christian ethics into the thought and behavior patterns of the local folk, which frequently reflects itself in large and generous acts of spontaneous kindness and good will, in which the whole community may unite to succor a needy family or restore a home destroyed by fire. The most charitable interpreta- tion to be placed on its attitude to institutional religion is that the town is thoughtless in respect to its churches. It seems to take the serene and uncritical viewpoint that the Church always has been and hence must be an institution that lives forever.
But the church in Waldoboro is a human as well as a divine institution, and institutions, while extremely tenacious of life,
11Nationwide survey of religious beliefs and practices made by an independent re- search bureau and sponsored by the Catholic Digest. Report summarized in the New York Times of Dec. 9, 1952.
507
In the Year 1950
do die, and churches in this town have died. The Lutheran Church, the chapel in the Genthner District, the Monroe Chapel have ceased to be, and the proudest, the loveliest, and the once strongest of them all, the "Old North Church" died within the memory of men now living. The Methodist Church in North Waldoboro, too, in recent years reached the closing-up stage. It remained open not by reason of its own vitality, but through secular aid from that district, and through sharing its pastor with another small parish. Churches of the same denomination in the village and out- lying districts share one pastor in common, who like his predeces- sors of a century and a half ago, "rides the circuit" each Sabbath, ministering to four churches. Only one of the older churches is seemingly able to survive by virtue of its own ebbing vitality. But appearances are not always identical with reality, and in this case this church could not be supported by its own membership alone. Its seeming vitality is rather a sort of vicarious grace imparted through the loyalty of its parish and friends in the town, whose ancestors at one time had their religious roots in it.
From what has preceded in this section it is clear historically that churches have died in our town. Just as clear is it that what is now left of the surviving older churches in this community are already far along in this slow decline toward ultimate extinction. Today in the suburbs churches cling to life only through the sup- port of a devoted handful; in the village through the support of two handfuls; and a future is foreseeable when worship in the town in its more dignified and historical forms will cease to be. In effecting a community survey of religious life and faith - the most ancient, the most fundamental and the most essential of man's spiritual experiences - the conclusion becomes unavoidable that those who through blindness, selfishness, or indifference withhold their support from the churches while the latter are still living, will, sooner than they may think, be confronted by the issue whether they wish to live in a community without churches. Here necessity may prompt us to action where the voluntary virtues of generosity and wisdom have failed.
In this survey reference has been omitted to those branches of the Christian church in the town which in their modes of worship hold and revert to the more primitive forms and beliefs of the early church. In such institutions there is evidence of the vigor of the earlier centuries, and there can be no question but that they minis- ter strongly and effectively, albeit perhaps strangely, to those who find their inner needs fed and fired by more exciting modes of worship. Religious experience is as varied as human individuality, and all forms that satisfy man's craving for oneness and harmony with God and His righteousness will eventuate in good. It is clear, however, that the appeal of these newer sects is to a limited public,
508
HISTORY OF OLD BROAD BAY AND WALDOBORO
and that it is beyond their power to serve satisfyingly that group of intelligent but spiritually unleavened men and women which should constitute the main nucleus of an active, dignified, and vigorous religious life in the town.
The brief, preceding analysis has outlined the religious con- dition which prevails in the town. That its people are religiously inert and indifferent; that the number who seldom or who possi- bly have never set foot in a Christian church is impressive; that the older churches are in a state of slow dissolution - all leads to a query that can be phrased in a single word, why? Since this question is complex in character there must be many answers. In the listing of some of them it should in the first place, in justice to the laity, be made clear that the Church cannot entirely free itself from a heavy degree of responsibility for the condition existing.
It is an unfortunate and regrettable fact that too frequently in the past its pulpits have been served by men inferior in educa- tion, intelligence, wisdom, and spirituality to many of the laity of the town. Such a view is amply evidenced by the churches' own leaders. At the national convention of one of the largest of our Protestant denominations, held at Atlantic City in May 1947, the Reverend Dr. Milton C. Froyd, Director of that church's program of study for ministerial training, stressed the fact that to a consid- erable degree the deterioration in the churches could be ascribed to too many poorly educated ministers. He further stated that of 5,300 pastors in the 7,000 churches of his denomination "only thirty-six per cent could qualify for the standard requirements of ordina- tion, viz .: four years of college and three years of seminary study."12
This is a fact of decided relevance to this analysis, for of Dr. Froyd's sixty-four per cent of semi-educated clergymen there have been too many in this town in recent decades. Lacking as they have been in education, wisdom, and spiritual maturity, unquestionably their ministrations have been found "stale, flat and unprofitable" by too many local people. Under the leadership of such men, the drift of any church in any normally intelligent community is inevitably downward. This cannot be otherwise, where the leader lacks the essentials of a strong, rich, and appealing spiritual personality and where many of the laity, superior to the priest, find his social role in the community gauche and inept, and his utterances from the pulpit repellent to their sense of truth.
The obverse of the preceding paragraph presents another facet of this problem which in justice to the church should receive its due emphasis. One summer not so long ago the pulpit of one
12New York Times, May 22, 1947.
509
In the Year 1950
of the town's churches was occupied by a professor in a large American theological seminary. He was gracious in manner, liberal in thought, and eloquent in speech. There was an appreciable rise in church attendance and a somewhat less appreciable rise in finan- cial support.
To clarify the situation further let us proceed on the basis of an highly improbable assumption. The assumption is that sud- denly and for no apparent reason church attendance and financial support in the town trebles itself. In consequence it becomes pos- sible for the churches to divest themselves of lower salaried preach- ers, and for a stipend of $5,000 per annum secure preachers of unusual educational, personal, and spiritual endowments - men who would be a grace to the community and a power in the pulpit for making the good life appealing, attractive, and irresistible. All this would, indeed, be a miracle, and yet it could come to pass on the next Sabbath and on all the Sabbaths thereafter, if the com- munity willed it. The significant thing is that this miracle does not happen because the community does not will it. This simple, hypo- thethical illustration admits of rather compelling inferences.
At this point our analysis narrows down to one specific focal issue - why do not the people of the town support their churches? The answers to this question can, perhaps, best be arrived at by defining the attitudes of the citizens as they affect the town's religious life. First of all, there is unquestionably a rather large group who are inactive or conventional believers in the traditional theology of the church, the doctrines of original sin, salvation through the blood, and the last judgment, followed by heaven or hell. This is a peculiar group. Their act of believing and yet doing nothing by reason of such belief can be explained only as a frozen conventional attitude, or as an expression of sheer animal lethargy.
Another group to be mentioned in passing is made up of the gayer, lighter spirits for whom the car, the motorboat, and the picnic exercise a far stronger pull than the Church of God. Still another group, so sizable that it may be said to represent a trend, is made up of those with whom the economic impinges on all the higher values of life, including the religious. For these the Sab- bath is just another work day to be used for gainful employment at home or in the open marts of labor. Locally this is a highly characteristic and humanly demoralizing trend. Such a judgment on the part of the analyst finds strong confirmation in an inde- pendent source, that of a great living historian of the United States, Professor Samuel Eliot Morison of Harvard University. In commenting on the national weaknesses of our time Morison states his conviction that a very fundamental one is "the decay of religion, and the filling of that vacuum by an almost universal pursuit of gain," and he adds "this decline in religion has been
510
HISTORY OF OLD BROAD BAY AND WALDOBORO
felt all along the line: it has weakened the ethical system that Christianity inherited from Hellas and Judea, and produced a state of public and private morals comparable only to that of Juvenal's Rome." This judgment not only states the problem vig- orously and authoritatively but it definitely points back confirma- tively to the view of the analyst relative to the social and moral consequences ensuing in the nation from pagan attitudes.
In addition, there is a sizable number of those who half- consciously practice an ethical cult, living uprightly and believing that in the sight of God this is the sole essential and a sufficient guarantee of a state of future blessedness. While still adhering to its ethical teachings these people find the dogmatics of the Chris- tian faith out of line with their convictions. With such the church is felt to be an unnecessary adjunct to their lives. Consequently they do not feel impelled to participate in its work. Another and much smaller group are the Deists, although they would not, per- haps recognize themselves by this name. These believe in the direct worship of God and hold the Christ to be the last and greatest of the prophets. They are few in the community, and some of them participate in the work of the churches, while others, not being able to make the necessary adjustments in their own consciences, abstain, realizing that if their religious views were known they would be labelled in the church as heretics.
This leaves but two small and rather negligible categories for further consideration, the few agnostics and atheists in our midst. The agnostics are for the most part sincere persons who hold that naught can be known of God's will for man and naught of man's ultimate destiny. From this it would follow that such people find the cocksureness of the Church distasteful in reference to matters which they hold to be unknowable. Atheism, the most irrational and untenable state of mind in reference to religion, is a negligible factor in the local problem of church attendance and support. In these classifications of the large, nonchurch support- ing public we have the answer to spiritual lethargy and religious indifference in Waldoboro.
This review of our religious life has dealt entirely with that of adults. It certainly would be incomplete without some reference to the younger, twenty per cent of the town's population, and incomplete without a brief comment on the correct Christian attitude of the churches to the many who are indifferent to their offerings. It may be truly said that childhood, and more especially adolescence, in the town represents an area of spiritual fallowness. The whole responsibility for religious instruction devolves on the Church schools. They meet it as best they can, but in this age of world-wide scepticism they face a most difficult, even perhaps an impossible task. There is no area of education requiring greater
511
In the Year 1950
finesse and skill. Were the Church schools equipped to handle religious instruction with the same professional adequacy and sound pedagogy as our day schools, and were there teachers avail- able who were carefully grounded and trained for this work, it is highly probable that there would be more children seeking out such schools to their real and enduring profit.
As it now stands, many of these minors find the instruction of their amateur teachers such an unpleasant and unprofitable pabulum that they become candidates for graduation before they become adolescents. There lies in this fact a great spiritual loss which comes just at that time in life when the dreams, the hopes, and idealism of youth are in their fullest flower, when the need of spiritual sustenance is greatest and usually most decisive in imparting to life the set of its future course. On the whole, here is a lack which keeps ever adding to the great unleavened mass of our indifference to religious values.
Need help finding more records? Try our genealogical records directory which has more than 1 million sources to help you more easily locate the available records.