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Last year Ann added to a spiritual crisis in Joe's life. Like most Jackson Countians, the adults in Joe's family have belonged to the Church of Christ* since Civil War days. Now it was time for Joe to make his decision about entering the church, and it was a decision he faced with dreadful seriousness. Ann, a devout church member, had no intention of marrying an unconverted man. She talked with him for hours about the Bible, pleaded with him to accept the faith. Joe lashed around in his Bible late into the nights, reading time and again Proverbs 27:12: "A prudent man foreseeth the evil, and hideth himself; but the simple pass on, and are punished." After a year of inner turmoil, Joe slipped away one weekday and drove to the home of a Church of Christ minister in Carthage. "Preacher," said he, "I want you to baptize me." The ceremony was quickly performed.
Returning to his farm from his Kansas City triumph this week, Joe planned to apply to his debts the $1,000 that went with his Star Farmer award. His immediate future is made uncertain by his I-A draft status. But no matter where he is sent or for how long, he will return to the life that, through his troubles as well as his triumphs, he has come to consider the best and the fullest in the world. Says Farmer Joe Moore: "Farming's the closest thing to the Lord you can do. You work with the things the Lord has made and put. The rains don't come and this dies or that dies and you don't make with this and you do make with that. It's just you and Him."
*Members of the Church of Christ are also known as Campbellites, after Thomas Campbell and his son Alexander. In 1809, in Washington, Pa., they rejected Calvinism, formed an association for "the Restoration of the Ancient Order of Things." The Campbellites believe that laymen have the right and duty to preach. Their motto: "Where the Scriptures speak, we speak; where the Scriptures are silent, we are silent." About 80% of Church of Christ membership (1,500,000) is in rural areas.