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Pacific Press Publishing Company · New York · December 8, 1892

FromThe American Sentinel, Vol. 7, No. 48

“The Constitution and Religion.”

[Bitter attacks and counter attacks have lately been made upon each other by Catholics and Protestants through the press of Chicago. The immediate cause of this was a sermon by Dr. R. S. Martin, pastor of Grace Methodist Church, in which he charged Roman Catholics with being enemies of the Government, and announced his refusal to attend the first meeting of the World’s Congress of Churches, which met at the Auditorium, Friday evening, October 22, because the speaker of the evening was Archbishop Ireland of the Roman Catholic Church.

Drawn out by this there appeared in the Chicago Evening Post an expression of views from a non-churchman, who looked upon the situation from the standpoint of a citizen, and “Interested Outsider,” and though awake to the hatred for each other which exists in the hearts of the members of the two great divisions of the so-called “Christian Church,” in this so-called “Christian Nation,” still thought the Constitution of the United States able to protect these belligerents from each other.

In a following issue of the Post, A. F. Ballenger commented upon the positions taken by this “Interested Outsider” in the language reprinted below.]

Editor of the Evening Post:

In your Tuesday evening’s issue “Interested Outsider” painted a picture, sad but true to life, representing the malignant sectarian hatred everywhere manifesting itself. Your correspondent draws aside the curtain, presents the forces in battle array and then instantly gives the order to disband in the following words: “There is no danger of any church, Romish or otherwise (Protestant), gaining control of this country. The Constitution is safe and the clergy should thank their several and individual gods that the Constitution is back of them. . . . There will be no religious war. If one should appear the United States will mingle with it, and heads will be cracked indiscriminately, Protestant and Catholic alike.” Your correspondent shows greater knowledge of ecclesiastical party contentions than he does of the Constitution of the United States and recent federal court decisions. The Constitution upon which his optimistic view is based, in the light of recent decisions, is valueless in the direction of protecting us from the strife of religious controversies. Judge Hammond, of the United States Circuit Court for western Tennessee, recently declared, in the case of R. M. King vs. The State of Tennessee, that “they (the founders of our Government) left the States the most absolute power on the subject (of religion), and any of them might, if they chose, establish a creed and a church and maintain it.”

Again, the United States Supreme Court recently decided that “this is a Christian Nation.” The Supreme Court is above the Constitution since it has power to interpret it. Now that it has been decided that this is a Christian Nation the next question to be decided is, who are the Christians? Protestants claim that they exclusively are the Christians, and the Catholics just as vehemently make this claim for themselves. Just so sure as Constantine was compelled in the fourth century, after adopting Christianity as the religion of the empire, to decide which of the contending factions was the “legitimate and most holy Catholic Church,” so now the next logical and inevitable step to be taken is to decide which of the contending elements is entitled to be called Christians. Having done this, the Government will have become a partisan to a religious controversy, and will thereby lose its power to keep the peace, the power which your correspondent, after presenting a most forbidding state of affairs, falls back upon for safety.

Already Congress is beginning to act upon this Supreme Court decision. Congressmen with this decision in their hands argued on the floor of Congress that since this Nation had been decided by the Supreme Court to be a Christian Nation, it was the duty of Congress to protect the “Christian Sabbath” by closing the World’s Fair on Sunday. Congress acquiesced and thereby enlisted the Government of the United States on one side of a religious controversy, not only as to which is the “Christian Sabbath,” but also as to the proper way of observing it. The trouble has only just begun, and the Constitution is powerless, under recent interpretations given it, to keep the peace.