Home Missions

Rev. Fred Eastman, by resigning from the Home Missions Board of the Presbyterian Church and writing an article about it, has created a disturbance, the elements of which are as follows:

Most Protestant Churches collect many millions for what is called Home Missions. These are Christian enterprises which can be conducted better by a national organization than by local churches (as, for example, care of immigrants, Indians, "poor whites"). Part of the work is assistance of small parishes which cannot provide for their own spiritual nutriment.

Money contributed for a special purpose is always applied in full as directed by the donor. But most of the money comes from churches, and has been collected by the churches, without other specification than "for Home Missions."

Now Mr. Eastman charges that ministers tell their congregations all about the most picturesque side of Home Missions work (such as loving the Indian and victualing the innumerable children of immigrants) ; but that a great portion of money so raised is used to assist small denominational churches which are absolutely unnecessary and which exist only to compete with the church across the village street. The money, says he, is raised under false pretenses.

Mr. Eastman is singularly alone in his contention. Hermann Nelson Morse, Budget Director of the Presbyterian Church, flatly declares that only 10% of Home Missions money is used for the so-called "competitive churches" and that a great part of that 10% is merely refunds to the churches in accordance with a Presbyterian rule that the Home Missions Board must return to any church on demand in any one year as much money as the church contributed in the previous year. Mr. Morse's report is generally accepted as another vindication of the purity of church financing.