Book excerpt: Excerpt from The Country Church in Colonial Countries: As Illustrated by Addison County, Vt;, Tompkins County, N. Y. And Warren County, N. Y All these studies have been made from the point of view of the church, recognizing, however, that social and economic conditions affect its life. For instance, it is evident that various racial groups influence church life differently. Germans and Swedes usually tend toward liturgical denominations; the Scotch to non-liturgical. Again, if there are economic pressure and heavy debt, the church faces spiritual handicaps and needs a peculiar type of ministry. Because of the importance of social and economic factors in the life of the Church the Opening chapters of this book have been given over to a description of these factors. At the first glance some of these facts may appear irrelevant, but upon closer Observation they will be found to have a bearing upon the main theme - the problem of the Church. Naturally the greatest amount of time and study has been de voted to the churches themselves. Their history, equipment and finances; their members, services and church organizations; their Sunday schools, young people's societies and community programs, have all been carefully investigated and evaluated. Intensive investigation has been limited to the distinctively rural areas and to those centers of population which have less than inhabitants. In the case of towns larger than this an effort has been made to measure the service of such towns to the surrounding countryside, but not to study each church and community in detail. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.