Perhaps what most weighed upon my mind as I read Lockwood's book was his diagnosis of religious responses to the locust plagues. On the American frontier, farmers who faced the oncoming cloud of ruin were forced to ask for aid. At first, they asked the church, and the church responded with prayers. But when it came time to ask for more than prayer, the church shut its doors. As Lockwood states, 'Offering up prayers was one thing--giving up wages was quite another.'
In the end, the destitute turned to the federal government for their subsistence, eventually raising a series of fundamental political questions that would set precedents for agricultural policy, natural disaster, and federal relief into the present time. Today, we wait for the government to pronounce a 'natural disaster'--where 'natural' means precisely that.
This sounds like a fascinating book. I hope to pick it up someday soon! The comment from this review that caught my attention was the idea that farmers turned to the church for help with the locust plagues and the church had little to offer other than prayers. I'm sure that this is a gross over-generalization. I would imagine that some churches and some Christians responded in very tangible ways for the needs of the farmers. And yet there is little a small, rural church could offer if the community's corps were wiped out in one plague.
As a small, rural church pastor, I often feel like all I can offer are prayers. Yet many do ask for more than prayers from the church and the pastor. How should the church repond? What should the church do?
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