Government Religion

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Jun 26, 1889

FromThe American Sentinel, Vol. 4, No. 22.

Government Religion.

[The manuscript of the following article was found among the papers of the late Elder J. H. Waggoner, after his death. It was evidently intended for the SENTINEL, and contains pointed facts, gathered from various ages, pertinent to the question of national religion now agitating our country. The matter has not been published before, and those who have been readers of the AMERICAN SENTINEL from the beginning will be pleased to read this, one of the latest emanations from the pen of its founder.]

THE self-styled National Reformers repudiate the idea that they are advocating a union of Church and State, and yet they openly advocate “religious legislation” in the State, and “national religion,” even commending the Roman Catholic Church as being the upholder of national religion. It is a sad truth, as many martyrs have witnessed, that the Roman Church is an earnest defender of national compulsory religion. Indeed, the National Reformers have not only commended the Catholic Church, but advocated a coalition with that church, because that, in some countries, it is the only upholder of national religion. And if anyone wishes to understand the actual benefits and beauties of national religion, he need not go to the history of the Inquisition, to Constance, to Smithfield, and like places, but let him go, even at this day, to those countries where the Catholic Church and national religion have entire control.

Let the Presbyterian members of the association try a six months’ residence in Spain, and they will find that, in certain circumstances, their Presbyterianism must be compromised or concealed, or it will prove the door to a prison. And if that is not sufficient, let them go to certain places in South America where government is administered solely in the interest of the church, and where such is the case the country is removed scarcely a step from barbarism. How can people rise whose minds and consciences are enslaved by a priesthood which claims the exercise of supreme power in the name and place of God. And yet this is exactly the position that the Christian Statesman and Christian Nation declare that the Church and the State relatively ought to occupy. They say that the kingdom of Christ is to be set up by the votes of the National Reformers, and they are to be the administrators of the kingdom.

The celebrated historian, Neander, noticing the secularization of Christianity in the Roman Empire, made the following suggestive comment:—

“While it was the State that should be Christianized, instead of this Christianity would be changed into a civil polity, and what belongs to the kingdom of God would be secularized; an evil in which, to be sure, as we shall see, the Eastern Roman Empire especially involved itself.”—Torrey’s Neander, Vol. 1, p. 162; Hurd & Houghton, N. Y.

This is the natural tendency, and, indeed, the very object, of national religion. And what do we find in the United States at the present time but a plea for the accomplishment of this object? We are gravely informed that the Sunday, as the “Christian Sabbath,” is the “very safeguard and bulwark of our holy religion.” Prize books are industriously circulated to prove to the world that the Sunday is one of the most sacred and important of all religious institutions. And yet politicians, and doctors of a sickly divinity, and such sensible religious journals as the New York Independent, assure us that when they advocate its enforcement by the State, it is not at all as a religious institution, but altogether as a “sanitary regulation,” as “a Government holiday,” and that compulsion to observe it is not an infringement upon anybody’s conscientious convictions or religious rights, because it is not enforced upon religious grounds, but for purely civil reasons. If that is not secularizing what they claim to be a most sacred religious institution, we fail to see what could be. Reading the words of Neander, and applying them to ancient Rome, we can all see the inconsistency, the evil, and the danger. But when the very thing is being enacted in the United States, under the specious pretext of Christianizing our beloved country, and to glorify the Saviour, how different it looks! But it must be remembered that the Inquisition was established, and the auto da fé was kept in existence, by the very same pretext.

The Independent scorned the idea of the National Reformers, and of all who wished to give our Nation a religious character by changing the Constitution. But at length it declared this as the solution of the difficulty: Let the “Christian Sabbath,” and other Christian tenets if necessary, be adopted by the Government as civil institutions, and all may consistently be compelled to observe them as civil laws. The Sabbath ceases to be a religious institution as enforced by the

Government, and therefore it is not religious persecution to compel people to observe it even though they conscientiously observe the identical day commanded in the Bible.

The reader will see that the idea is not new. Neander outlined it as the evils of the Catholic Church in ancient Rome in the early centuries. On the fulfilling of this purpose I will give another item of history. In a work entitled, “A Concise History of the Papal Supremacy,” published in Dublin, Ireland, 1810, a copy of which I found in the library of the British Museum, in London, I read something of interest on this subject.

The general council of Chalcedon was called by the Emperor Marcian in A. D. 351. It is well known that its canons provoked no small controversy and contention. The history here referred to speaks of the action of the emperor as follows:—

“He forbade any person to hold disputes in public about religion; and he gave this reason for it: ‘He does injury to the judgment of the holy synod, who shall discuss and dispute the articles which were there rightly judged and disposed of, since those matters appointed by the bishops, assembled at Chalcedon, concerning the Christian faith, were ordained by us, or were decided by our commandments; and those who despise this law shall be punished.’”

And so the matter has already been solved in this self-same way. It was no infringement on the rights of anybody’s conscience to compel them to accept without questioning the canons of the council. Oh, no; they were established as imperial laws, and surely it was right that all should obey the laws of the empire. How easily and consistently is the whole matter disposed of, and nobody’s religious liberty endangered. “Whatever man has done, man may do.”

An authority with the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union has presented a picture of the happy state of the Nation when every voter will be called upon to consider the religious bearings of political questions; when Christianity shall be discussed in every caucus, and declared from every rostrum. Neither is this a new idea. Neander has also given us a sketch from real life of that very state of things; and he has stated the inevitable results. Thus he speaks:—

“Now, as so much depended on the fact whether a party had the emperor’s vote on its side, every art was employed, consequently, to secure this; all that was corrupt in the Byzantine court found its way into the bosom of the church—court parties became doctrinal parties, and the reverse. Imperial chamberlains, eunuchs, directors of the prince’s kitchen, disputed on formulas of faith, and affected to set themselves up as judges in the theological disputes. That which must pass current for sound doctrine in the church was subject to the same fluctuations with the parties at court.”—Pages 165-66.

Here is the evil inherent in this national religious system, as we have pointed it out in the SENTINEL. If our Nation is to retain its republican features, then the religion of the country is to be subjected to the decision of every election, liable to be changed with the changes of administration, and every corrupt faction in the State, or will urge its way into the church for political effect. And yet we are charged with being enemies to Christianity because we do not unite with them in their efforts to bring about this very state of things. Woe to the church and to Christianity in our country, if ever this National Reform scheme is successful.

They must be dull indeed who cannot see that all that is corrupt in politics will force itself into the church, whenever a profession of Christianity becomes necessary to political preferment. That was a wise and prudent action of the framers of our unrivaled Constitution prohibiting religious tests in our Government; a provision well calculated to preserve the purity of religion in the churches, as well as an equal administration of justice to all classes.

Eusebius, the historian, overpraised Constantine for the benefit that it was supposed that he had conferred upon Christianity and upon the church; yet he left on record the baleful effects of the emperor’s kindness and liberality, writing thus:—

“In truth, I can myself bear testimony to the grievous evils which prevailed in those times; I mean the violence of rapacious and unprincipled men, who preyed upon all classes of society alike, and the scandalous hypocrisy of those who crept into the church, and assumed the name and character of Christians.”—Life of Constantine, chap. 54.

Statements of this kind might be multiplied to almost any extent, yet the lovers of national religion are wont to paint the church, in the days of Constantine, as in its most happy state, blessed with the patronage of this first Christian emperor.

Human nature is always the same—never to be trusted too far. Like causes may be expected to produce like results. Many in America flatter themselves that in this age, and in our country, there can be no danger. So it always appeared when evils came in by small beginnings, and with deceitful promises. But the promises are just as deceitful, and the dangers just as great, at this time as in any age when religious ambition grasps for the reins of civil power.