RELIGIOUS ENCYCLOPEDIA
Home Missions
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 forces 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 has 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
Organ-
Spent in
Mission-
Added on
ized.
1904.
aries.
Confession.
Baptist:
American Baptist Home Missionary Society
$458,771
1,450
6,000
American Baptist Publication Society
134,012
1,076
Women's American Baptist Home Mission Society..
43,484
Women's Baptist Home Mission Society.
87,263
Southern Baptist Convention . .
109,670
8,011
National Baptist Publication Board
Congregational :
Home Missionary Society
27,520
570,629
1,916
5,767
American Missionary Association . . .
441,938
1,134
Sunday-school and Publishing Society
69,589
Church Building Society
207,493
Education Society
12,169
Cumberland Presbyterian
100,000
1,000
Disciples of Christ:
American Christian Missionary Society
385,000
1,650
Free Baptist
31,888
Free Methodist
3,148
Mennonites
10,000
Methodist Episcopal :
Missionary Society of Methodist Episcopal Church .
534,452
4,000 1
Church Extension Board
146,103
Freedmen's Aid Society
124,710
Women's Home Missionary Society of Methodist Episcopal Church.
308,998
Moravian 2
11,003
Presbyterian:
Board of Home Missions of Presbyterian Church, U. S. A . ...
479,812
1,180
7,378
Women's Board of Home Missions of Presbyterian Church
345,883
1,153
Board of Church Erection
193,570
Southern Presbyterian
160,000
Examining Committee General Assembly.
40,000
Protestant Episcopal
Reformed Church:
539,989 3
1,140
Board of Domestic Missions ...
95,500
1,096
Church Building Department
23,500
Board of Publication
United Brethren
85,000
United Presbyterian:
Board of Home Missions
105,000
1,540
Board of Freedmen's Mission.
67,530
1 Churches aided. 2 Work carried on by the church, not by a society. 3 In addition to the amount expended there were given for diocesan missions during the three years ending Sept. 30, 1904, $1,413,117.
Another mighty impulse in the same direction as
that resulting from the opening of the Northwest
Territory followed the purchase of
9- Effect Louisiana in 1803. While the Northof 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 Purchase gave us the mouth of the Mississippi and undisturbed 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 magnificent 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, and 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
Home Missions