he Gospel and life of Jesus of
Nazareth furnish the essential inspiration for that spirit of loyalty
without which all organization is in vain. Professor E. C. Lindeman has
ably expressed this in his discussion of the relation of the Community
and Democracy:

"The most formidable foe of Democracy, however, is the
confidence which people place in schemes and plans and forms
of organization. What the social machinery of our day needs
is spiritual force to provide motive power. The modern
Community Movement will fail to give Democracy its practical
expression if it is not motivated by a spiritual dynamic.
Such a dynamic force was unloosed with the message and life
of Jesus of Nazareth. He lived his life on the basis of
certain basic democratic assumptions, and He scientifically
demonstrated those assumptions. In His eyes all individuals
were of value; through the social implications of His
message sin became democratic and the burden of all; in His
aspirations all humankind were included. He assumed that
Love would solve more problems than Hatred. He even assumed
that to have a human enemy was a social anomaly. And He
believed that religion was essentially a system of behavior
by which the individual need not be swallowed up in the
group, but by which the individual must find ultimate
satisfactions in spiritualizing the group."[101]

Community loyalty will give rise to a true provincialism which will do
much to give smaller communities a satisfactory status and to make them
more independent in their standards and purposes. It is common to deride
provincialism, but what we deprecate is the inability of the provincial
to associate with the outside world, and the city man may be as
"provincial" as the farmer from the back hills. True provincialism, on
the other hand, is essential to the progress of civilization. The
tendency of city life is toward imitation and reducing life to a dead
level. Eccentricity may be objectionable, but without individuality of
persons and communities life would be stupid and monotonous. There is
probably no greater need for strengthening rural life than a community
loyalty which will prevent the unthinking imitation of urban life and
will take justifiable pride in local ideals and achievements. The need
of a larger appreciation of the value of a true provincialism has been
well descr