AN account of the latest instance of the arrest, trial and imprisonment of a Seventh-day Adventist for violation of the Church-and-State statute enforcing the observance of the religious dogma of Sunday observance was presented upon the editorial page of the New York “Evening Post” of May 27, under the heading, “Case of a Seventh-day Adventist,” in the form of the following communication to the editor of that newspaper, signed “C. M.” and dated at New York, May 25:
“SIR: One would suppose that the days of religious persecution by a union of Church and State were a thing of the past, but the following report of the recent arrest and imprisonment of a Seventh-day Adventist reads like a story of the Dark Ages:
“John Curlett, of Fords Store, Md., is now in the Centreville jail, having been arrested for working on Sunday.
“In order to see Curlett at work, the constable was obliged to drive around a back road, then thru another man’s farm. Leaving his horse here, he came thru a woods and found Curlett working fully a half mile from the public road.
“Wednesday, May 8, his case came before the court. He was found guilty, and upon his refusal to pay the fine, he was placed in jail for thirty days.
“During the trial Mr. Curlett was given the privilege of speaking to a crowded courtroom, some even standing on seats in the rear of the room to get a glimpse of the prisoner. Mr. Curlett spoke in the quiet, meek way so characteristic of the man. He said in part that he would not willingly break any of the State laws, unless those laws conflicted with the law of God; but while this court decrees that the first day is the sabbath, a higher court has told us the seventh day should be observed.
“When told by the court that the constable could not be restrained from coming to his farm to see if he were working, he said: ‘I arrange to do all my Sunday work where no one will be annoyed; as was testified in the court, the constable found me working one-half mile from the public road; I can only ask, therefore, that you will be as lenient as possible whenever I come before you.’ Mr. Curlett’s address is John Curlett, Centreville Jail, Centreville, Maryland.”
This correspondent places this case in the right category in using the terms “religious persecution,” “union of Church and State,” and “Dark Ages” in connection with it. And this is by no means the only instance in which a religious dissenter from the religious dogma of Sunday observance has in recent years been imprisoned in the United States. And, in most of these instances, as is very probably the case in this instance, the arrest and prosecution were made because the person was a religious dissenter from this religious dogma which has managed in spite of progress and enlightenment and the principle of separation of Church and State to retain the support of the criminal statutes of nearly all the American commonwealths. And thus in a double sense have these cases been cases of religious persecution, for not only has a religious dogma been enforced, but it has been enforced upon people who were selected for that enforcement because they were religious dissenters from the dogma, while others, flagrantly violating the dogma and the statute supporting it, were unmolested, they being nominal acceptors of the dogma. The publication of the above communication upon the editorial page of the New York “Evening Post” brings this latest case of the Sunday-law persecution of a Seventh-day Adventist to the attention of that class of the nation’s newspaper readers in which the intelligence and conscience of genuine Americanism is best represented, and therefore will doubtless be of service to the cause of justice with respect to the injustice and anachronism of Sunday enforcement.
