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What Ails the Church?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 November 2011

Thomas N. Carver
Affiliation:
Harvard University

Extract

I remember a certain country church in a Western State as it was about forty years ago. It was a plain, wooden structure with uncushioned seats, uncarpeted floors, and with plain glass windows through which the farmers could keep an eye on their horses, hitched to the racks outside. The men and boys sat on one side of the central aisle, while the women and girls sat on the other, and there were about as many on one side as on the other. The congregation was made up mostly of farmers and their families, who came to church in farm wagons, drawn by work horses. The father and mother in each case usually sat on the spring seat, while the children and the hired men sat on seat-boards, sometimes indulging in the luxury of a cushion made by folding a quilt. Within the church the elderly men sat in the “Amen corner,” and the elderly women sat in the opposite corner. The small boys, for some reason which I did not then understand, sat with their fathers instead of with other boys of their own age.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © President and Fellows of Harvard College 1915

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