Religion and the State

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Aug 6, 1908

Religion and the State

THE evidence is not lacking to show that this country is being leavened with ideas which will prepare the way for a reversal of the traditional policy of separation between church and state. The campaign is being carried forward from two different standpoints. On the one side the conception of religion is being so changed as to make it more an affair of this world than of the next, as dealing with the relations between man and man, rather than with the relations between man and God. It seems quite reasonable that religion of this sort may properly come within the purview of civil government.

On the other side, there is a continuous campaign of education to bring the people to consent that with a nominal separation of church and state, there may yet be an actual union of religion and the government. The fruit of this twofold agitation will doubtless be seen in due time.

As a contribution to the discussion of this whole question, Prof. Charles Zueblin, until recently a member of the faculty of the University of Chicago, has published in book form a series of lectures in which he makes a strong plea for a certain type of religion organized and fostered by the state. He declares that “it is no more incongruous to have a national organization of universal religion than to have a national organization of humanitarianism.” This statement throws a clear light upon Professor Zueblin’s conception of religion. As further defining his views, we quote:—

There is a common faith of the whole people; it may not be tangible, it may not have been capable of expression in creeds, without producing schism and sect; but it can be conceived, and it is in need of organization. The state must be supreme; the church must be subordinate; and religion can only be free in the state. Our minds have been so befogged by the conflict between church and state that we have grown unable to see the harmony of religion and society. When it is recognized that every individual must have his own religion, regardless of the ecclesiastical authority to which he may hold allegiance, then it will be seen that only the state can facilitate this.

In urging his scheme for a state organization of religion, Professor Zueblin does not hesitate to advocate that houses of worship should be provided at public expense. He says:—

It is more practicable for the state to provide edifices for common worship, or for the consecutive service of different bodies of religionists, so that all may have use of public property without discrimination, than to exempt [from taxation] sectarian church property. If people will have private churches, they should be permitted to do so and to pay for them; but if they will worship in common, or in a common building, as often occurs in Switzerland, it may promote universal religious fellowship.

The kind of religion which can be encouraged and directed by the state, and which is contemplated in this plan, is clearly indicated in the following paragraph:—

A national organization of religion, like the national faith, will pass beyond the scope of the church or churches. The church of the republic will know neither Jew nor Gentile, Greek nor barbarian, bond nor free, because its raison d’être [basis of existence] will not be that of external authority, historic orthodoxy, or the aggregate of temperamental faiths, but the will of the people, inspired by the moral impulse of collective effort in the state.

The present trend toward a religion which might consistently be placed under state control is voiced in a recent editorial in a leading exponent of liberalism. We quote one statement:—

Men who never gave much thought to the ethics of good citizenship, confess they now realize that religion that does not express itself in conduct socially useful is not true religion.

Professor Zueblin gives expression to the same idea in his reference to “the substitution of social utility for theological sanction;” and upon this tendency he rests largely his hope for the success of his movement. In commenting upon this plea for a state organization of religion, one of the leading magazines, Current Literature, to which we are indebted for the quotations in this article, gives expression to some thoughts deserving of special attention. It says:—

The Constitution of the United States declares that American citizens shall be free from any special religious influence; but this uncompromising declaration has already been modified. In many of the States, religious exercises are conducted daily in the schools, and legislative assemblies are opened with prayer. The principle involved in such practises is akin to that underlying Professor Zueblin’s plea.

According to this view of the case, one violation of the constitutional provision against a union of religion and the state affords a sufficient reason for

going further in the same direction, and for a complete union of religion and the government.

The significance of the utterances quoted in this article should not be overlooked. They plainly indicate a trend toward a religion founded not upon revelation but upon “the will of the people.” They show that there is rapidly gaining ground a conception of religion which reduces it to the plane of good citizenship, a merely social movement. As these views are more generally adopted, it will become easier to regard it as the proper function of the state to define and to supervise religion, and the disregard of such a state religion will naturally be defined as treason.

The best answer to this whole perversion of religion, and this false view of the relation between religion and the state, will be found in the preaching of “the everlasting gospel,” and the manifestation of the truth in the lives of the true subjects of the kingdom of heaven. The demand for the teaching of the pure gospel was never greater than at the present time.