Persecution Raising Its Venemous Head Again by C. S. Longacre

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Oct 21, 1915

Persecution Raising Its Venemous Head Again

By C. S. Longacre

SINCE our last report of the indictment and conviction of our brethren before the county court at Watonga, in the State of Oklahoma, new complications have arisen. As soon as the public was apprised of the fact that our brethren were convicted by the court for Sunday-law violations, some organization wrote anonymous letters to many of our brethren who were in the habit of working on their farms on Sundays, threatening them with indictment and conviction before the courts if they did not cease from servile labor on Sundays. We can only surmise what influences are back of these anonymous letters.

These letters also show how much respect the writers of them have for their own statutes. Section 1964 reads as follows: “All manner of servile labor on the first day of the week is prohibited, excepting works of necessity and charity.”

Section 1965 reads as follows: “It is a sufficient defense in proceedings for servile labor on the first day of the week to show that the accused uniformly keeps another day of the week as holy time, and does not labor upon that day.”

Of course, the Ministerial Association may argue that the records show that they were opposed to this exemption statute for Seventh-day Adventists when the bill was enacted into law by the legislature, and that they are consistent in demanding that Seventh-day Adventists be compelled to cease from servile labor on Sunday. But they certainly cannot prove themselves consistent when they insist upon the State’s prosecuting Seventh-day Adventists for violating the Sunday statutes of the State while there is an exemption statute of equal force for the observer of the seventh day. Such a course makes the agitator the violator of the statutes instead of the defendant.

Because our brethren paid no attention to these anonymous letters, but continued to do as they had done aforetime and as they believed they had a right to do under the statutes of Oklahoma, a mob organized in the town of Hitchcock went out into the fields on Sunday, and severely beat three of our brethren who were found laboring in the field. One of them, the son of Elder Meyer, is suffering from a concussion of the brain, and is lying at the point of death. His assailants threw him to the ground and fractured his skull with a large piece of coal which they took out of the coal bunker of a threshing machine. These assailants have been indicted for assault with intent to kill. This furnishes new evidence in the cases of our brethren (who have been convicted and have appealed their cases for retrial) that it is a religious controversy, backed up by religious bigotry, intolerance, and mob rule.

Simultaneous with this incident comes the news from Tennessee that a number of our brethren near Goodlettsville have been indicted for Sunday labor. Investigation has brought to light the fact that the real cause of these prosecutions is due to the missionary activities of our people. Just as soon as a number of new members joined our churches in these localities, our enemies in the community, stirred by the spirit of jealousy, proceeded to prosecute our brethren for the same things which they tolerated in them heretofore.

Sunday-law crusades are breaking out in all parts of the country. The agitators in these religious crusades are the ministerial associations, the Lord’s Day Alliance, and the W. C. T. U. The present war seems to make a certain class very religious in sentiment and fanatical in their zeal for the enforcement of a state religion.

We trust that our people will help us to place the Liberty Magazine in the hands of all the judges, lawyers, and newspaper editors. The judges and lawyers have to deal with these prosecutions, and they ought to understand the principles of civil and religious liberty which are so dear to us, and upon which the progress of our work depends in this country. Five dollars would send the magazine to twenty-five of these prominent men.

C. S. LONGACRE.