Why the Johnston Sunday Bill is Wanted by W. A. C.

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Apr 21, 1910

Why the Johnston Sunday Bill is Wanted

By W. A. C.

At nearly all the hearings that have been held on the Johnston Sunday bill we have been reminded by some of the friends of the measure that the opposition to it came mostly from outside the District of Columbia. Thus at the hearing held March 8, 1910, Mr. Charles F. Diggs, a Washington attorney representing the Washington Retail Grocers’ Protective Association, said to the committee:—

“I say to you, this is a local measure; that Congress, in enacting this law, is enacting it for the District of Columbia, and it does not affect or concern anybody outside the District of Columbia. It is merely a police regulation intended exclusively for this jurisdiction. It being a local measure, to use a very plain and homely expression, it is nobody else’s business.”

That support as well as opposition to the bill comes from outside the District we need but cite the recent action of the Methodist conference, in session at Baltimore, when, on April 5, resolutions were passed concerning both the Johnston and the Coudrey District Sunday bills. As published in the Washington Times of the same day, these resolutions and the discussions upon them are summarized as follows:—

“Besides condemning the work on the Sabbath day, the conference passed resolutions indorsing the Johnston Sunday rest bill. The conference also condemned the legalizing of Sunday baseball. A number of speakers spoke on the value of keeping the Sabbath day free from work.”

What are the Methodists outside the District of Columbia making these District bills their “business” for, if this proposed legislation is purely of “local” concern?

And if a Congressional Sunday law for the District is a mere civil matter, no religion in it at all, only a “police regulation,” as we are told, why is it that the religious people, both inside and outside the District, are so concerned over it, and demanding it in the interests of protecting the “Lord’s day,” and “keeping the Sabbath day free from work”?

And why are the National Reformers, this American remnant of the old Scotch Covenanter Presbyterian school, with headquarters at Pittsburg, Pa., so concerned over the passage of the Johnston District Sunday bill, if it is only a local measure and of only local concern, and no religion in it? In the last issue of their official organ, the Christian Statesman, for April, 1910, an editorial beginning, “Washington and the District of Columbia have no Sabbath law,” closes by saying:—

“The value of such a law would lie not only in the relief which it would bring to many who are now deprived of their weekly rest, but in the support which it would lend to the cause of our national Christianity. The absence of such a law from the national statute-books is a reproach to the whole nation.”

This is just what we have been saying were the facts in the case all along—that the church people, not only in the District, but all over the country, who are clamoring so loudly and so incessantly for a District Sunday law, want it to give national support to religion. In other words, they wish Congress to pass a religious law—a law to “support” religion.

Men may say that this proposed legislation concerns only the people of the District. Plain and very palpable facts demonstrate the contrary. They may say that it is not religious. The simplest logic, and testimony the most abundant, indisputable, and overwhelming, prove that it is.

Simply because some of the advocates of this legislation may not ask for it upon avowedly religious grounds, does not prove that such legislation is not religious.

With all the facts before him, no honest man can say nor longer contend that Sunday legislation by Congress for the District of Columbia, is of only local concern and not religious. W. A. C.