This is occurring nationwide and felt strongly in rural communities. The decrease in the connectedness or cohesion among community members. The decline in personal identification with rural communities. How residents identify themselves is being shaped more by the mass media than by their communities or families. Special interests that split communities.
Small farmers oppose developers of large confinement hog facilities.
Environmentally minded residents oppose loggers of old-growth forests. Others oppose hazardous waste storage, pesticide use, public land regulation or minority group immigration. Uncertainty about the roles and rules by which to live. Many rural people, particularly the young, know they can't idealize the rural life of the past, and they're not sure about alternatives for the future. Researchers, however, found that some congregations did not adequately serve people in pain during the farm crisis.