Carolina Church Rolls
Last week the News
Letter gave to its readers a table ranking the 50 religious bodies of North
Carolina in the order of their membership.
This week we present a table based the 1916 Census of
Religious Bodies in the United States, ranking the counties of North Carolina
from high to low according to the ratios of church membership to total
populations. A North Carolina Club study, published in the Community Service Week Bulletin, gives a similar table for 1906.
Gains and Losses
Putting side by side the figures of these two tables, it
appears (1) that 48 counites made decided gains in church membership during the
10 years, that the gains in Richmond, Dare, Tyrrell, Jones, Buncombe, Caswell,
and Polk were tremendous, that the ratios in Ashe and Alleghany were nearly
doubled; (2) that 33 counties lost ground, the greatest losses being in
Guilford, Transylvania, Yancey, and Burke, that 29 of these retrograding
counties were in the lead in 1906; (3) that five counties stood still and
marked time during this 10-year period—Northampton, Lincoln, Catawba, Jackson,
and Wilson; (4) that Bertie, which headed the list in church membership in 1906
retained its lead in 1916 with a gain of one point, that Edgecombe which footed
the list in 1906 was still at the bottom in 1916, with a gain of five points,
23 against 18 per cent, and (5) that the state as a whole moved up five points
during the 10-year period—from 40 to 45 per cent.
Our Home Mission Job
The 1916 figures show that 1,260,000 people in North
Carolina are outside the church; within the curtilage of the church, to be
sure, but not on the church rolls. They are 55 per cent or more than half of
our total population.
Counting out children less than 10 years of age, our
non-communicants are nearly 650,000.
In two counties—Edgecombe and Wilson—more than three-fourths
of the population is outside the church!
In eight counties more—Stokes, Jackson, Haywood, Swain,
Rockingham, Martin, Johnston, and Pitt—more than two-thirds of all the people
belong to the big church of All-Out-Doors.
In 17 counties more—Onslow, Madison, Graham, Alleghany,
Nash, Burke, Yancey, Surry, McDowell, Beaufort, Wilkes, Cherokee, Lenoir, Harnett,
Guilford, Columbus, and Brunswick—three-fifths or more of all the people are
outside the church, any church of any name, sect, or sort.
In 37, or more than a third of all our counties, the lost
sheep are from three-fourths to three-fifths of all the people! Here’s a home
mission task of gigantic proportions. The foreign fields are more picturesque;
but the home mission fields are white for the harvest.
A Chance for the
Church
For four years or more, devoted students in the department
of Rural Economics and Sociology at the University has been puzzling at the
problem of Religious Consciousness in North Caroilina—its prevailing type, its
characteristics and level, its values and deficiencies, and its relationship to
economic and social conditions, causes and consequences.
It is a fundamental subject of tremendous importance to our
civilization, and more and more it seems to us a subject that our church
authorities and church schools can afford to go at it hammer-and-tongs. The 10
weeks or so that we give each year to church and Sunday school studies in the
University might profitably run into 10 months or so in the church schools of
North Carolina and the church seminaries of the South. Or so it seems to us;
and with exceeding deference and reverence we are saying this to our church
authorities.
Lack of space forbids our doing more in the News Letter than
briefly summarizing the conclusions, some of them, that come out of patient
prolonged studies, at the University, of church problems in the mother state—as
follows:
Church membership ratios are low:
--In sparcely settled areas afflicted by social isolation,
--In areas where illiteracy and near-illiteracy ratios are
high,
--In areas of excessive tenancy farming, and
--In trade and factory centers where home ownership ratios
are low. And so on and on.
Singly or in combination, here are four social conditions
that are causally related to the low church ratios that challenge religious
zeal in 37 counties of North Carolina, and that vitally affect the status of
the church the whole state over.
Four distinct religious tasks confront us:
1.
Social integration in our countryside
2.
The cure of wide-spread illiteracy, black and
white
3.
The settling of our landless, homeless
multitudes—they are more than half of our people, town and country—into homes
of their own in our cities or on farms of their own in the country regions.
According to Isaiah
These are religious as well as secular problems. And what
tremendous problems they are in every land and country! Unsolved they will be
as certainly fatal to our civilization as they have been to every other in
history. Church authorities ought to be even more active than state authorities
in solving them—in sheer self-defense. The church must put an end to illiteracy
and tenancy in North Carolina, or illiteracy and tenancy, town and country,
will put an end to the church.
When Israel ceased to be a land of home-owning farmers and
reversed the deliberate plan of Moses, when her people became homeless dwellers
in fenced cities and a slender remnant of tenant farmers with no stake in the
land tilled the countryside, when her people refused to consider, for lack of
knowledge, then Israel went away into captivity.
So it was in Judah, so it has been in the history of other
peoples, and so it will be with every heedless people on earth today.
North Carolina needs to be profoundly stirred by these
fundamental causes of social ill, and in our opinion the church alone can do
it.
These social problems are not likely ever to be solved, in
our opinion, without the fire, the fever, the fervor of religious zeal.
Church Membership
Ratios in North Carolina
Based on the 1916
Census of Religious Bodies
E. Eybers, University
of Stellenboch, Union of South Africa, a graduate student of the University of
North Carolina
The figures indicate the ratio of church membership to the
total population in each county. The state average of church membership in 1916
was 45 per cent.
1.
Bertie, 74%
2.
Gates, 70%
3.
Northampton, 64%
4.
Tyrrell, 63%
5.
Hertford, 62%
6.
Chowan, 61%
7.
Camden, 59%
8.
Richmond, 58%
9.
Rowan, 55%
10.
Alexander, Caswell, Granville, Iredell,
Pasquotank, 54%
11.
Bladen, Dare, Lincoln, Washington, 53%
12.
Vance, 52%
13.
Catawba, Franklin, New Hanover, Pender, 51%
14.
Forsyth, Mecklenburg, Perquimans, Wake, 50%
15.
Cabarrus, Cleveland, Currituck, Davidson,
Warren, 49%
16.
Buncombe, Henderson, Rutherford, Scotland, 48%
17.
Person, Anson, Davie, Orange, 47%
18.
Jones, 46%
19.
Craven, Durham, Pamlico, Stanly, 45%
20.
Halifax, Macon, Montgomery, 44%
21.
Alamance, Carteret, Greene, Union, Wayne,
Duplin, Gaston, 43%
22.
Hyde, Polk, Sampson, Yadkin, 42%
23.
Ashe, Clay, Randolph, Transylvania, 41%
24.
Brunswick, Columbus, Guilford, Harnett, 40%
25.
Cherokee, Lenoir, Wilkes, 39%
26.
Beaufort, McDowell, Surry, 38%
27.
Yancy, 37%
28.
Burke, Nash, 35%
29.
Alleghany, Graham, Madison, Onslow, 34%
30.
Pitt, 33%
31.
Johnston, Martin, Rockingham, 32%
32.
Swain, 31%
33.
Haywood, 29%
34.
Jackson, Stokes, 27%
35.
Wilson, 24%
36.
Edgecombe, 23%
The following counties are omitted
for lack of authoritative population figures due to the formation of new
counties and the changes in territory of old counties since 1910: Avery and
Hoke, Caldwell, Chatham, Cumberland, Lee, Mitchell, Moore, Robeson, and
Watauga.
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