Denominational Societies

8. Denominational Societies

ary society in 1819, which covered both home and foreign work; the Episcopal Church, its Domestic and Foreign Mis sionary Society in 1821, also national; the Baptists, their American Baptist Home Mission ary Society in 1832; the Lutherans, their Home Missionary Society of the General Synod in 1845; and the Disciples, their American Christian Missionary Society in 1849. The Southern Presbyterians, Southern Baptists, and Southern Methodists also have their homeland organizations, doing an inval uable work in the Southern States. Other church bodies, Evangelical in character, will be found enumerated in the table given below, which have taken their part 8180, and are still intensely con cerned, in this great home missionary movement. Thus, by a steady; natural evolution of national need and evangelistic interest two societies have grown to be more than thirty; all the leading church bodies of America have gradually become organized for home evangelization, and a movement which began in New England in 1798 for the Chris tian enlightenment of a few kindred or neighbors moving westward has developed into a system as

343

broad as the national domain, by which the stronger churches of the land have shared, and are continuing to share, the burden of their weaker brethren, and, by a united.,effort, are strengthening those forms of Christian civilization upon which the safety of the nation depends.

The following table is taken by permission from Social Progress, New York, 1906, ed. J. Strong, W. H. Tolman, and W. D. P. Bliss. No later figures than these of 1904 have been tabulated.

a moment's hesitation the missionary organizations of the East and Middle West, with the loyal support of the churches, threw themselves into the breach. Emigration from the East and the Middle West began at once, and the missionary was not slow in following the trail. The order of missionary progress through the Louisiana Purchase bas been strictly along the lines of immigration and settlement. There is not a State in that vast tract which the home missionary did not enter while it was yet a

STATISTICS OF HOME MISSIONS. ip ~ 1832

1824 1877 1845

1828 1848

1853 1814

1849 1834 1882 1880

1819 1885

18890 1849

1818 1878 1844

1821

1831 1854

1853

1872 1885

Baptist: American Baptist Home Missionary Society .. ... . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . American Baptist Publication Sooletx.. Women's American Baptist Home Mission Society . . . . . . . Women's Baptist Home Mission Society .. .. .. ...... .... . . Southern Baptist Convention .......... National Baptist Publication Board ... . Con~re gational: Home Missionary Society ........ .. American Missionary Association . . . . . . . Sunday-school and Publishing Society . Church Building Society . .. .. .. ... . . . . Education Society ... Cumberland Presbyterian ................. Disciples of Christ: American Christian Missionary Society .............. .... . . Free Baptist ....................................................

Free Meodist..................................................

Mennonites .....................................................

Methodist Episcopal Miseionary Society of Methodist Episcopal Church .. . .... . . . . . . . . Church Eatenaion Board ..................................... Freedmen's Aid Society ......................................

Women's Home Missionary Society of Methodist Episcopal Church. Moravian',...................................................... Presbyterian:

Board of Home Missions of Presbyterian Church, U. 8. A. . . . . . . . . Women's Board of Home Missions of Presbyterian Church . . . . . . . .

Board of Church Erection .................................... Southern Presbyterian ....................................... Examining Committee General AesemblY ....................... Protestant Episcopal ............................................ Reformed Church:

Board of Domestic Missions .. . . . Church Building Department .... Board of Publication . . . . . . . . . . . United Brethren ..'.............. United Presbyterian: Board of Home Missions . .. .. . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Board of Freedmen's Mission . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

1458.771

134,012

43.484

87.283

109,870

27,520

570,829

441,938

89.889

207.493

12,189

100,000

385,000

31,888

3,148

10,000

534,452

148,103

124,710

308.998

11,003

479,812 346,883 193,570 180,000 40,000

539,9893

95,600 23,600

500 85,000

105,000 67,530

Mission- aries. 1,

144

1793

1,918

784

628

8 4.0001 34 1,180 484

188 1,140

186 180 245 225 Added on Confession. 8,000 1,078 b,787 1,134 1,000

1,860 919

20 422 7,378 1,153 1 Churches sided. 2 Work carried on by the church, not by a society. s In addition to the amount expended there were given for diocesan missions during the three years ending Sept. 30, 1904, 11,413,117.

Another mighty impulse in the same direction as

that resulting from the opening of the Northwest

Territory followed the purchase of g. Effect Louisiana in 1803. While the North of the west Territory was still in the first

Louisiana stages of occupation, even before the

Purchase. earlier settlers had obtained peaceful possession of the soil, the area of the nation was suddenly doubled. The Louisiana Pur chase gave us the mouth of the Mississippi and un disturbed possession of its entire course. It carried

our western boundaries from Lake Superior to the

Rocky Mountains. Fourteen States and Territories

have been carved out of this imperial 'tract. They

include the vast corn and wheat belts of the United

States, which are capable of feeding the world, while their underground treasures are among the richest on the globe. Here was a new and mag

nificent opportunity for home missions, and without

Territory, and always in the first and feeblest stages of settlement. From Missouri to Iowa, from Iowa to Minnesota, Kansas, and Nebraska, thence to the Dakotas, and on from these points to Wyoming and 'Colorado and Montana, and, last of all, to Oklahoma until every square mile inhabited by men has been sown with Sunday-schools, churches, and other institutions of education and religion. Something of the volume of this work may be gathered from the fact that on the one hundredth anniversary of the Louisiana Purchase, by a careful investigation, about 30,000 Protestant churches were enumerated within the bounds of this purchase, holding property valued at $58,000,000, sad having, approximately, 2,000,000 communicants. With rare exceptions this church growth was the fruit of home missionary culture, begun and maintained and ceasing only when the need ceased, or continuing to-day in the

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assured hope of independence and self-support. The churches of the East have never tired in this work. The fear, the hope, the purpose of early New England have been loyally inherited by her sons and daughters, the fear of barbarism, the hope of prevention, and the wide-spread conviction that America's day of judgment is in the West, a judgment to be determined only by the planting of churches and Christian schools.