Sunday Laws and Religious Liberty

International Religious Liberty Association · Chicago · Jun 21, 1900

FromThe American Sentinel, The Sentinel of Liberty, Vol. 15, No. 24.

Sunday Laws and Religious Liberty

The Vulcan (Colo.) Times wants to know “by what constitutional right do states pass Sunday laws at the behest of a combination of preachers?”

There can be but one answer to this question: there is no such right. The Times truly says: “As far as constitutional right is concerned, a man has a civil right to worship how and when he pleases, and to labor whenever it pleases him to do so.”

“But,” continues the Times, “even in Colorado there is a law on the statute books which imposes a fine of fifty dollars for working on Sunday, and the combined church element is at work manufacturing a public sentiment that will enable them to enforce it, it being only a ‘concealed weapon’ at present. If the above element succeed, and they will, then farewell to the boasted religious liberty of America, and give greeting to the faggot and the dungeon.”