p. 236 | Untitled article

Pacific Press Publishing Company · New York · July 31, 1890

FromThe American Sentinel, Vol. 5, No. 30

Evils of Religious Domination.

In the course of his remarks in the Senate, June 24, while that portion of the Diplomatic and Consular Appropriation Bill was under discussion, which has relation to the recommendations of the International American Conference, Senator Morgan, of Alabama, said:—

The South American States under the Spanish regime had one difficulty to encounter that we never really were confronted with, which has been more potent, more influential, upon the destinies of those States than the negro question has been in the United States, or any other question which we have had to contend with, not excepting our war with Great Britain; and this is the influence of an established religion. . . . It has taken the better part of the lives of their respective Governments, and an enormous outlay of money, and the shedding of vast quantities of human blood, to free them from the mistake which we escaped through our good sense in discarding the domination of any religious sect or power or church in our Government, and in adopting that wonderful scheme, promoted by Mr. Jefferson, of the divorce of the Church and the State. These peoples, one by one, nation by nation, have struggled out of the embrace of “this body of death,” for this is what it was to them, politically considered, and as fast as they have broken away from it (and most conspicuously in the case of Mexico) they have risen at once to order and progress and deliverance from embarrassment, and they have established themselves with wonderful rapidity in power, and in dignity, and in influence amongst the nations of the earth.

Such utterances as these should be recommended to the consideration of the judiciary of Tennessee, where it has just been decided, in Justice, Circuit, and Supreme Courts, that a conscientious Christian man who observes the Sabbath of the fourth commandment (the seventh day), might properly be indicted as a common nuisance, because he plowed corn on Sunday in sight of some half dozen persons, part of whom were avowed spies on his actions with the intent to prosecute him because of their religious intolerance.