Pine Mountain Settlement School
Series : RELIGION
Pine Mountain Settlement School
Statements of Belief
Early Statement of Belief for PMSS Church members. [Author and exact year is uncertain.] Pine Mountain Settlement School. n.d. [1930s ?] PMSS Printshop
TAGS: religion, statements of belief at Pine Mountain Settlement School, religious beliefs, God, Jesus Christ, Bible, church denominations, Funeralizing, folklore, religious beliefs, preachers, missionaries, churches, church music, founding beliefs,
STATEMENTS OF BELIEF AT PINE MOUNTAIN SETTLEMENT SCHOOL
The people who settled the Central Appalachians were a deeply religious and doggedly independent people, and their descendants remain so today. The settlement workers who came to work with this deeply religious population in the first quarter of the twentieth century found a population which often had fundamental religious practice and beliefs that were outside the practice of many of the workers. Those workers quickly found that local religious beliefs should not be tampered with. The workers of the School came from diverse religious backgrounds, largely Protestant, but also grounded in their individual belief systems. The local community religious beliefs were equally diverse. The religious milieu, while diverse in both communities of interest , was remarkably malable and accepting and, and largely tolerant of the other’s religious heritage and belief systems.
Several of the Directors of the School were ministers and largely Protestant in faith, as were most of the Workers at the School. Many had served as religious workers in foreign countries including India, China, Turkey, and several African countries. Director Glyn Morris, a graduate of Union Theological School in N.Y.C. and Alvin Boggs, was a Wesley Evangelical Church of North America minister and later a founder and former administrator of Living Waters Christian School just outside the PMSS campus at Pine Mountain, a private Christian elementary school. Director Burton Rogers had worked in China through the Yale in China educational program. Later in his life Rogers was a devoted Quaker. Other Directors came to Pine Mountain through various church affiliations. For example, H.R.S Benjamin, also came to Pine Mountain through his work with the American Baptist Foreign Mission Society in China where he was instrumental in helping to establish a School in Ningpo, East China that joined a Northern Presbyterian school and an English Presbyterian school to form a strong educational center before the fall to the Communists. He continued a lifetime of association with the Baptist denomination. Religion builds strong belief foundations but denominations do not always stick.
Other staff, such as the Rev. Robert Stapleton, husband of Dr. Ida Stapleton and the Rev. Richard Baker, who succeeded the Stapletons in 1937 at Linefork Settlement, a satellite of Pine Mountain, were ministers who left their mark on the religious life of the School and the Community. Rev. Richard Baker, appointed by PMSS Director Glyn Morris, was a Presbyterian and retired as a life-long Presbyterian from the ministry of the Presbytery of Giddings-Lovejoy in Rolla, Missouri. Many staff, such as the Stapletons had a relationship with the Congregationalist Church and had served abroad as part of the wide-spread international work of the Congregationalists in Turkey. Edith Cold was also in Turkey and is a remarkable example of that stream of religious inspiration and courage of Congregationalist workers there. And the list an be expanded even more by the numbers of Presbyterians who passed through the School.
STAFF WORKERS AND EDUCATIONAL INFLUENCE
Edith Cold had a remarkable religious life. Born into a Quaker family, she applied as a Mennonite for placement with the Brethren (Mennonite Church) in Hadjin and Adana, Turkey, serving with the Congregationalist Church through ABCFM (American Board of Commissioners of Foreign Missionaries). As a Brethren, she was good friends with the missionaries from the United Orphanage and Mission who represented Mennonites, the Missionary Church, and Mennonite Brethren in Christ. Her sister Bertha Cold also worked at Pine Mountain School.
Like Edith Cold, a number of other staff women and men had complex religious backgrounds in a variety of denominations and experiences abroad. Many women and men found their way to the School through a variety of church contacts. Mary Rogers born in Greenham England in Berkshire County was the daughter of the local vicar. Through the Church of England she spent time in India working with Ghandi in the early years of her life. Burton Rogers, PMSS Director n the 1980s and a Yale graduate worked in China with the Yale in China Program until the Japanese Invasion in 1937. Mary and Burton Rogers, later in life were regular participants in a Quaker church in Lexington and maintained a long-standing relationship with the Quaker faith. The strength of these workers was measured not by their religious devotion, but by their good work and a journey through the biographies of those who have come to work at the School is a strong testimony to the power of human relations to change lives.
HISTORY OF DIVERSITY
In summary, religious practice at the School over the years has been diverse. Locally the diversity continues to echo to a degree the broader religious community which is increasingly diverse and eclectic. Any discussion of beliefs with the Pine Mountain Settement School community is, today, sure to call up a wide spectrum of deeply embedded religious ideas and convictions across a broad spectrum of peoples. Sects and denominations in the many local churches, abound but harken back to family heritage and reflect trends in the peoples of the Southern United States.
For example the largest religion in America is Baptist. In North America, the Southern Baptist Convention with 46,906 churches and 12,982,090 members, and the National Baptist Convention, USA, with 21,145 churches and 8,415,100 members, reflects the diversity within a specific religion and region. Conversations world-wide have become tangled by a marriage of religion and politics, but few would dispute the observation of personal sincerity and steadfast belief in his/her church in the rural South. Deeply held beliefs, as well as outspoken convictions, have been broadly respected and accepted within the Pine Mountain institution since its founding in 1913 and largely within the communities it serves. But, the increasing national tendency is toward the silo, the isolation of beliefs. This has been a growing trend felt nationally and locally, encouraged to a degree by social media. As the years have gone by and multiple denominations have found a voice in media, religious affiliation has joined a political dialogue that many agree has “muddied the waters” of religious affiliation and beliefs.
PMSS FOUNDING BELIEFS
The over one-hundred year history of the institution of Pine Mountain Settlement School suggests that the founding belieft of the School were and are sound. While the religious beliefs of founder Katherine Pettit are difficult to isolate as are those of her co-founder, Ethel de Long Zande. , there is no doubt as to their sincere and deeply held Christian convictions. The denominational affiliations are more difficult to isolate within the founding ideas and the over one-hundred years of the institution. One possibility for the continuity of the School centers on the founding beliefs of the institution.
The Workers who came to Pine Mountain in the early years had varying ideologies and religious convictions that appear to have been largely left on the doorstep of the institution. There are many signals that employees were discouraged from any proselytizing actions and encouraged to be accepting of a variety of religious practices. That said, there is a clear record of exclusion as well as shared beliefs within the history of the School. For example, while many of the staff have been part of Congregationalist missionary ventures and many returned to that field upon leaving Pine Mountain, there have been many non-sectarian employees, but there have been very few non-Christian employees. As indicated earlier, some Workers came as Presbyterians and left as Quakers. Some came with strong sectarian religious beliefs and were left questioning their belief systems. But, the broad history of the School, signals that the institution has sought to be a “Christian” institution, but one that is focused on education, not on Christian religion.
The literature of the Settlement School is replete with religious statements, but rarely with declarations of or demands for adherence to singular denominations. Holiness, Presbyterian, Methodist, Evangelical United Brethren, Congregationalist, Catholic, Quaker Congregation, Episcopalian, Baptist, and a myriad of hybrid religious congregants put aside their fundamental belief system for the greater belief in the individual right to seek an education.
The fundamental belief system that is deeply rooted in the Pine Mountain Settlement School as an institution, is that declared first by William Creech who donated the primary tract of land for the School. Uncle Williams Reasons continues to be the North Star for those seeking an institutional statement on religion and the conduct of one’s belief system. Almost a Declaration of Independence, Uncle William’s Reasons are centered on teaching. Various mission statements for the Pine Mountain Settlement School have been edited over the years but the fundamental message regarding religion is one of educated respect for the beliefs of everyone.
An Old Man’s Hope for the Children of the Kentucky Mountains
I don’t look after wealth for them. I look after the prosperity of our nation. I want all younguns taught to serve the livin’ God. Of course, they wont all do that, but they can have good and evil laid before them and they can choose which they will. I have heart and craving that our people may grow better. I have deeded my land to the Pine Mountain Settlement School to be used for school purposes as long as the Constitution of the United States stands. Hopin’ it may make a bright and intelligent people after I’m dead and gone.
SEE
RELIGION Student Reflections on Religion at PMSS
RELIGION Statements of Belief at Pine Mountain Settlement School
GLYN MORRIS 1941 TALK Religion in the Mountains
