USA > New York > Our diocese : a study of the history and work of the Church in the Diocese of Central New York > Part 4
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Committee. Of dignified appearance, sound thought and clear utterances, he always commanded attention and his opinion, respect.
Finally, reference may be made to a lay-woman of the diocese, Mary Emmeline Halsey, sometimes called "Saint Mary of Central New York."
When about twenty the care of her invalid father and the Willowdale farm devolved on her. Five years later she began visiting the farmer folk, largely tenants and of Danish birth. The work was so fruitful that Mr. Halsey gave to the diocese of Central New York a plot of ground near his house, on which was erected in 1872 Grace Church of Willowdale. Lay readers, students from Hobart College and occasional clergymen maintained the services. If these failed at any time Miss Halsey filled the gap.
One who was there for an Easter celebration in 1903, tells us of his novel experience. His hostess, then 1 a gentle little lady of about sixty, had seen to the church fires, waited on him at breakfast, rung the first bell, was usher at the church door, presided at the organ, flitted back and forth from this to help people un- familiar with the services, looked after restless little children. She was at home with every one.
After her father's death she gave her whole time to such work, and we quote a summary of this as a fit ending of what we have recorded in the way of examples of Diocesan Contributions.
"She now devoted her entire time to the visiting and other Christian work in which she had become so expert. Nursing the sick with a strong, tender hand and a loving
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heart, teaching the Church catechism to the children and often to their parents and grandparents, too; preparing folks for confirmation and seeing that the youngsters, and if need be the oldsters also, of each household were brought promptly to Baptism, Miss Halsey was more than a dea- coness and a sister of mercy combined. For many, if not for most of those whose baptism was the result of her activity, she herself acted as Godmother. Her Godchildren totaled about five hundred, and for each one in whose name she had made the sacred promises she prayed twice every day of her life, using always in her prayers the full Christian name of each Godchild."
CHAPTER VI
MISSIONARY PROBLEMS
C ENTRAL NEW YORK is largely a missionary diocese, about a hundred parishes and missions receiving aid from the family fund known as the Diocesan Missionary Fund, to which all parishes and missions contribute. Occasionally, the weaker children of the family grow to vigorous maturity and achieve self support ; but some of them have not been well nurtured and, unable to stand against the rigor of their environment, have wasted away for lack of nutrition. Others, once young and vigorous, have yielded to old age and are left as a heritage to be tenderly cared for, cherished for what they have been and done.
We read with interest of far-off missionary bishops and their travels, but it is often forgotten that the present Bishop Coadjutor came to Central New York as its mission- ary bishop, to have the care and over-sight of its mission parishes and to travel from hamlet to hamlet in furtherance of its missionary work. In 1921, the full Ecclesiastical Authority of the Diocesan was transferred to him, giving him the care of all parishes and the direction of all the diocesan work. But he does not cease to be our missionary bishop, although his work has been greatly increased. In the over- sight of the missionary fields, the Bishop has an Arch- deacon as his assistant and helper, so that the burdens and responsibilities are shared between them.
In trying to visualize the task of the church in spreading the gospel to every creature in the diocese, the authorities are confronted with a problem that is almost staggering. The number of those who have no church affiliation of any sort and who therefore are without moral and spiritual standards may be counted by the thousand. Many, per-
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haps most of them, are average citizens, law-abiding, patri- otic, and well-intentioned. But their lives are not ordered by the overwhelming love of God and their children are growing up without even a traditional respect for Christian teaching.
City Problems. Many of these unfortunates,-heathen, almost as much as the Esquimaux, or the Patagonians, - are living in villages or cities, within a stone's throw of church and clergy, so that missionary efforts in their behalf are naturally made by existing parish priests.
Unfortunately, in most of our cities the Episcopal Church is hampered by "parochialism". Each parish struggles with its own problems and the general problem of Church extension in a given city receives little mutual consideration. If ventures are made they are the ventures of individual clergymen, or of a group of families, and the result is often a desperate struggle for a long period. City work needs to be planned as a whole. The Bishop might well call the clergy of every city together and decide on strategic points for planting new parishes, which should either be jointly supported until well established, or be made parochial mis- sions under a vicar, as has been done in Trinity Parish, New York City. Particularly should the clergy attempt to interest influential men and dependable families in the new and weak parishes. A little leaven can leaven a whole lump. At present, great residence sections grow up un- churched. We need money to do such work, but we need also workers -- missionary-hearted clergy and laymen will- ing to do the hard work of initial organization.
There is another phase of religious work in the average city which challenges the church's love and that is the slum work. There are many people in every city in the Diocese living in poverty and vice and squalor. These people should be ministered to by the church on a community basis -- if not directly, then indirectly through the Salvation
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Army. It would be better for the church's spiritual virility, and for her reputation as well, to do such work herself, but the indirect service, i.e., through the Salvation Army, obvi- ates duplication of efforts and utilizes experience and ma- chinery already built up.
Village Work. Then there is the village work. Un- questionably we might well branch out into more of the villages in which the sound and sane teaching of the Church is unknown. That the church is an unknown quantity in the minds of many villagers of the diocese has been well illustrated. In conversation with one of our fellow-mem- bers, a certain woman said : " I like the Episcopalians very much but never cared for their church because they do not believe in the divinity of Christ." We have something to contribute to the stablizing and the uplifting of the life of such communities. We have religious privileges to give, in worship and sacraments, which they now lack.
Again, this is largely a question of men, money and zeal. Because our men are few and our resources small, we have been combining missions ; yet a man for each place is the ideal, and village parishes seldom grow best without a resi- dent clergyman. We have not enough men to put one in every place where there is a Church, nor enough money to sustain them while they carry on the existing work ; much less have we the money to sustain yet other men while they endeavor to plant the Church in new towns. More zeal on the part of the clergy in the matter of Church extension is the only remedy and they will have to be helped by more en- thusiasm on the part of their congregations for such work, and by more willingness to share the services and time of their rectors for such a good cause.
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The beautiful little Church at Marathon is due to such zeal on the part of the Rev. Warren W. Way, while rector at Cortland, though services had been held there at a much earlier date. The mission at Dryden was founded by the earnest devotion of the present suffragan Bishop of Montana.
There is also a great need of more fidelity on the part of laymen, so that wherever they go, they may be a nucleus around which a congregation can be built. In Apostolic times the spread of Christian individuals meant the spread of the Church, and the Church at Jerusalem was the Church in the house of John Mark, the Church in Achaia was the Church in the house of Stephanas, and the Church of Philippi was the Church in the house of Aquila and Pris- cilla. Today, in almost every hamlet and town where there is no church, there is a home which might be a center in which children could be instructed and to which periodic visits could be made by the Archdeacon or some other priest, to oversee and guide the teaching, and administer the sacraments. Many village Churches owe their origin to such loyal and devout homes, and we hope to see many more so originate.
Too often, however, Church families, finding no Episcopal Church in the village to which they remove, have not the needed courage or constancy and so they affiliate with some existing religious body. Then, when the Church does enter, they have made ties difficult and embarrassing to break. Or, worse yet, they drift away from all religious affiliation and are lost to the Church's cause. The Bishop and the Archdeacon have been constant in urging the clergy to look after these "scattered sheep " and in the vicinity of Utica there is a Rural Missionary, who tramps many miles on such errands. If well-to-do parishes would contribute by help or money for travel, the local clergy could, and we are sure would, do much more in this truly missionary work.
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Industrial Communities. From time to time, industrial communities spring up and should be given diligent atten- tion. In such communities there is generally a nucleus of Church families, and these people should be gathered together and provision made for oversight and for services at stated intervals by a neighboring rector or missionary. Money should not be spared when it is a question of propa- gating the faith on promising soil ; nor should it be spared in obtaining a desirable location for future church building. But money should be cautiously used in assisting people to obtain religious privileges beyond that which they can afford, or earnestly desire. Parishes should indeed help one another in building churches in a neighborly way, but central funds should be sparingly utilized except in helping those who are trying to help themselves. Johnson City affords a notable example of what can be done through wise foresight. Started by the clergy of the neighboring city of Binghamton, as a mission among the workers of the great shoe factory, the church has developed rapidly and wisely. In the few years of its existence, it has acquired a large property, built a parish house now used for services and has plans ready for a splendid church building. Sherrill, the home of the Oneida Community, and Groton, where the " personal typewriter " is made, are other examples of sim- ilar developments in industrial communities. Endicott and West Endicott are still others of the same type.
Rural Work. But the real problem of diocesan mission rural work is that of the farm dwellers. There are three classes ; first, the farm owner, of native stock, who if not an active member of some religious body in the nearest village probably has some loose attachment to some kind of a church somewhere ; second, there is the tenant farmer, who usually shifts from farm to farm and from one locality to another too often to form any permanent relationship or to become well known to the village clergy ; third, there is
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the foreign-born farmer, who is, in increasing numbers, taking to the land for a living. He constitutes perhaps the greatest of all rural problems, for he may be of any one of many different nationalties and our clergy speak almost none of their many languages. He picks up the language of barter and trade, but seldom has enough English to carry on an intelligent conversation on religion. His children, when they are old enough, are the surest avenue of approach to him, a fact that emphasizes the importance of church schools in reaching these foreign-born farmers.
The importance of strictly rural work can hardly be ex- aggerated, because, on account of the constant movement of population from farm to village, from village to city and from city to metropolis, the moral standards of this country are largely affected by the training given to the country boys and girls. Unless the stream is kept pure at the source the ultimate reservoir is sure to be contaminated.
We have not funds to employ enough men for aggressive rural work, and the Church has hesitated even to start because the results would be of such small account statisti- cally. Only in Chenango County has anything of this kind been plainly possible.
Chenango County. Through the missionary interest of Mr. Gerritt H. Van Wagenen, many years ago a fund was left to the Diocese, which, chiefly under the wise man- agement of the late John R. Van Wagenen of Oxford, has increased to nearly $50,000, the interest upon which is available for the support of a missionary for Chenango County. The late Rev. Robert M. Duff was general mis- sionary in the county on this foundation. He was followed by the Rev. J. A. Springsted. Each of these men estab- lished new missions, but there is yet much virgin soil to be tilled ; for, although Chenango County is noted for its many strong parishes and beautiful church buildings, there are whole townships in which the worship of the Church
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has perhaps never been heard. During the war the shortage of clergy made it necessary to assign the work temporarily to the rectors of neighboring parishes, but now a missionary has again been appointed, who is just developing his plans of work. Similar effort is made on occasion by local clergy in other parts of the Diocese but the work as a whole is inadequate and inefficient.
Reasons for Apparent Neglect. The reasons making for the church's failure to fulfill her mission to the rural pop- ulation of America are many. The work is extremely difficult-more difficult than large town or city work. Distances are great so that communication and travel are often impossible. To those who do not understand them, country people are cold and indifferent. Fundamentally solid, dependable, loyal, they are, nevertheless, conserva- tive, questioning, and slow to respond. The equipment for carrying on the work is often all too meagre. Motor cars for transportation, printed matter for distribution, centrally located buildings for services, church schools and buildings for social purposes are altogether too infrequent. The salaries offered the clergy are inadequate. And there is the constant flux of population and of leaders.
The real reason for the Church's failure to cope with the Rural Problem, however, is not summed up in the inlierent difficulties of the work. The real reason for the failure lies in an unconscious perhaps, but nevertheless certain miscon- ception of values in the mind of the church. Because of the larger numbers, the quicker results, the strategic values, so called, of city work, the mind of the church has been led to believe not in the importance of city and country work alike, the one complementary and essential to the other, but, in the importance of city work and the unimportance of the coun- try work. As Rev. Clarence W. Whittemore says, "The church thinking meanly of the rural parish, the rural parish thinks meanly of itself and the rural parson thinks meanly
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of both, of his job and himself, and either neglects both or raises himself to the things he has been taught to consider more important."
Not properly realizing the true perspective of the Church's work, the authorities send inexperienced and im- pressionable novices in the priesthood to the small town and rural work-thereby permanently fixing the pessimistic idea of small work already present in the mind of the priest, chilling his zeal and cursing the most difficult of problems with consummate inexperience.
The reason for the church's failure to do all that God planned she should do among the children of the soil lies not only in the inherent difficulties of the problem, and not only in misconception of the value of country work, but in lack of consecration on the part of the clergy themselves. Jesus came without "purse or scrip." He sent His apos- tles out without "purse or scrip " and they went out in the spirit which such privation symbolized. They denied their very selves. Not until the clergy can go out with that same spirit of consecration-without envy of others and constantly and intimately dependent upon God for suste- nance, vision and love can the Church minister glowingly to the isolated, the reticent, the stolid people of the countryside.
Possible Remedies for Existing Rural Conditions. The first thing to be done to remedy the situation and promote the Church's work in the rural communities is to correct the Church's estimate of country life in general and the Church's duty to that life. First of all let it be remembered that while there may not seem to be as many people living in the country, there actually are as many as there are in the city and in some sections of the country there are more. The second thing to remember is that just as the country feeds the nation with the staff of life, with grains, wheats, etc., so the country feeds. the city, the nation, the world
-
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with human recruits. Indeed the country supplies the needs of the social, industrial, political life as the schools feed the colleges. "Who's who in America," the list of the principal scientists, artists, manufacturers, students, constructive engineers, of the country is composed very largely of the names of those born in villages of two thous- and or less. It is not too much to say that the origin, sta- bility and present power of America are due in no mean measure to those who learned their letters in the District school. And so with the country church and church school. They feed the city churches with members, leader- ship, devotion and clergy.
The management and manning of the Rural Church problem is a subject for deep study. In our own Diocese the work of management lies in the hands of the Bishop, the Department of Missions, the Archdeacon and the Convocational Deans. In some Diocesses, Convocations are organized with a view to instructive and inspirational work only, management and monies looking toward the support of the rural work being handled by the Bishop and Dio- cesan Treasurer. There are arguments in favor of both systems. Mission parishes -- to use a slightly more inclusive term than the rural church-should be encouraged to be- come self-supporting wherever possible. Weak and declin- ing parishes and missions should be rendered services so long as there is evidence that they are really wanted by an appreciable number. After that the members of the rural church might be gathered and brought to the nearest parish church. Defunct missions should be cut off-the memorials and furnishings saved, the church building sold and the money used to support work already being maintained elsewhere or to develop new work .*
Of the outside forces which tend to promote the work in
*For definite information on the way in which the missionary work of the Diocese is managed refer to Canon XVI of the Diocesan Journal.
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the Rural districts the Bishop's personal interest stands supreme. "Preaching missions " serve an important pur- pose in the rural church, just as the Diocesan-Wide Mission has proved useful to the Diocese. Many rural parishes have taken on new life as the result of special conferences held in them and teaching missions should be regularly held as a necessary part of the church work. Some of the larger parishes have done Big Brother work among the smaller churches in their vicinity. Such cooperation is doubly blessed. It blesses both the churches benefited and develops the leadership and usefulness of those doing the actual work. Such informal cooperation might well be developed all through the Diocese.
Had we time we might quote many instances of splendid success in Rural Church Work, both on the part of the clergymen of the church and on the part of country churches themselves. Suffice it to say in closing this section, that the clergyman of God's Church who will love his people and give himself to them day and night as Jesus did of old may not build a great cathedral but he will do a great work, if it is no more than saving one lonely soul. Country work is lonely work, meager work, but it is blessed-and blessed be the man who loves it and gives himself to it.
Foreign-born. The latest but not the least of our mis- sionary problems is that of the foreign-born. Central New York was settled by English and American stock with a sprinkling of Dutch from Albany and New Amsterdam and of French from Canada, with immigrants from Ireland, Wales, and Germany. But lately, being near the seaboard, it has received more than its share of the steady stream of immigration coming from Southern Europe, Russia and Poland and the Near East. These immigrants have con- gregated in large numbers in the industrial centers, with individual families here and there on isolated farms. Lately, they have begun to drift into the residential towns.
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MISSIONARY PROBLEMS
The Roman Catholics among them quite generally attach themselves to the local Roman Catholic parishes, and find much to make them feel at home. Nevertheless, because of their unfamiliarity with American ways, many of the foreign-born fall away, especially in the case of those whose adherence to the Church of their native land was merely nominal.
In the case of members of the Eastern Orthodox bodies the situation is quite different. They find few churches of their own communion and few priests of their national religion to welcome and guide them, They are strongly disinclined to attend the Roman Catholic Church, having been bred up in independence of the Vatican and being accustomed to a married clergy and a church service in their own tongue. If they have been directed to us, they find our own services lacking in the more elaborate ceremonial they associate with divine worship. Our clergy are unable to converse with them because of limitations of speech on both sides, and consequently are unable to make them understand that we can give them the benefit of true priesthood and can teach their children a true faith ; therefore, they hold aloof.
The difficulty is being met in several ways. Their Mother Church, aroused to the spiritual peril of the large number of her children now in our midst, is sending priests of their own faith and tongue to search them out and min- ister to them. To such priests our churches are often loaned for their services at a separate hour and St. Paul's Church, Utica, Trinity Church and the Church of the Savior, Syracuse, and All Saints', Fulton, as well as other churches about the Diocese have been used for such services until it becomes possible to them to provide homes for them- selves. In other cases their priests have instructed them to turn to our clergy for their special needs, and baptisms and weddings are often thus performed. These methods leave
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them largely alien, a situation undesirable nationally and religiously ; but, before we can do more, we must establish closer relations with the orthodox Churches of the East, satisfy them that we are in possession of the Orthodox Faith, Apostolic Orders and Sacraments and get their clergy to instruct immigrants to seek us out. We must also train a number of clergy to speak their various tongues.
This problem of the alien is a pressing one in Utica, Syracuse, Rome, Binghamton, Watertown and in certain smaller industrial communities such as Fulton, and Carthage, Solvay and Sherburne, Johnson City and Endicott.
Of course there are also many irreligious aliens and these constitute both a problem and a menace.
In the summer of 1921 an Italian priest from the Foreign- born Division of the Department of Social Service of the Presiding Bishop and Council made a survey of the condi- tions and opportunities in the various parts of the Diocese. As a result of the survey the Department of Missions rec- ommended the retention of a Diocesen Missionary to the Italians, and so, in May, 1922, the work once carried on by an ex-Roman priest in the church of the Holy Cross, Utica, and for long maintained by the clergy of that church was taken over by the Diocese and an ex-Romanist, a devoted priest of our faith, was secured to develop the work. Although the missionary to the Italians maintains his home in Utica and devotes most of his time to work among the people of Utica and Rome, he is Diocesan in character and readily ministers to the people of his race in the rest of the Diocese.
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