The Rise and Fall of Religious Liberty in America
By C. M. S.
The Federal Constitution and State Legislation
On the tenth of May, 1776, the delegates of the thirteen original colonies, assembled at Philadelphia, passed a recommendation to the effect that each colonial assembly should meet and agree upon a constitution, or frame of government, for its people. On May 15 a preamble to this resolution was adopted, recommending that each colony declare it to be its intention to suppress the exercise of all British authority in that colony. Some of the colonies very explicitly and emphatically acted upon the recommendations of this general body; but, as pointed out in previous articles, all did not act upon the recommendations within the year. Some, interpreting aright the second sentence of the Declaration of Independence in reference to the equality of men, or having learned aright the lessons of religious tyranny rehearsed throughout their borders, asserted the equality of human rights in matters of conscience as well as in civil things. Therefore they were outspoken in their declarations in reference to freedom from human control in matters of religious faith and practise. Through flood and fire, through fine, imprisonment, and exile, the inhabitants of those colonies were learning the sacred value of soul freedom. Out of that turmoil was coming a statement of a principle that was to characterize this country as different from any other upon the earth. That was the tenet that man is accountable to God alone in matters of faith and conscience. Individuals had held it before, but no nation had ever espoused it. That doctrine was germinant in the Declaration of Independence; for the equality of men precludes the possibility of one man regulating the religious belief and practise of another. That doctrine spoke out more plainly in Article VI of the Federal Constitution, in these words: “No religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust under the United States.” It is significant also that the first amendment to the Constitution of the United States should deal with this factor so fundamental to true liberty. It reads: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,” etc. The language of these documents upon this question indicates that it was the purpose of their framers to leave religious faith unfettered and religious practise untrammeled by the enforcement of a legal ritualism. That doctrine, advocated by the Anabaptists on the continent of Europe and in the British Isles, and for whose advocacy thousands on thousands of them were slaughtered; that doctrine, whose acceptance and practise made martyrs of many New Englanders, and sent Roger Williams into exile to establish a better state and teach a more Christian brotherhood; that doctrine, whose every inch of progress the established church of Virginia hotly contested for a hundred years,—that doctrine was set forth as the very guiding star of the infant republic of the New World. A nation assumed the rôle of teacher and set a lesson for the world to learn. The world has taken note of it. Republics are springing up, monarchies are granting constitutions and calling the people into legislative assemblies, and nations centuries old in intolerance and persecution are granting to their people freedom of conscience and liberty of worship. The world can not deny to America the right to claim precedence in this matter of adopting, as a nation, this principle so vital to the best interests of both church and state and to the peace and happiness of men; nor can America shirk her responsibility of maintaining in its purity that doctrine given her of heaven. She has not done it, but the fault does not lie in the doctrine. The truths found in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution are just as true, and their intrinsic worth just as great, as they were in the days when the life of the nation was trembling in the balance. For more than a century the nation passed no law of a religious nature. But of no State in the Union can this be said—not even of Rhode Island. The tyranny of church-and-state union had been so amply illustrated in colonial days that the founders determined to separate the two, allowing each to achieve its high purpose unhampered. But every religious law passed by a legislature, either State or national, has helped to shatter the ideal upon which our government was founded; and that shattering process has been going on from the very days of the nation’s founding unto the present time. Many of the States denied the very liberty they professed to grant, and did it in the fundamental law of the State, by making religion, or the lack of it, a test of qualification for the fullest citizenship; and in all of them, to a greater or less extent, laws have been passed that deal with “religious concernments,” such as the proper observance of Sunday. Indeed, Vermont goes so far as to put in her constitution itself a clause demanding the observance of “the Lord’s day,” and a section requiring her representatives to declare belief in God, acknowledge the inspiration of the Scriptures, and own and profess the Protestant religion, and that, too, within a year of the signing of the Declaration of Independence. It is indeed an anomalous situation, that, while the nation is founded upon the idea of a separation of church and state, the component parts of the nation are practically a unit in acting upon the opposite principle through the enactment of laws establishing a day of worship, and enforcing its observance under pains and penalties. It is not surprising that a nation should eventually cease to stand upon a principle repudiated in practise by all the States of which it is composed. That disintegrating process can not go on forever, and the nation maintain its stability upon the principle involved. In the early colonies, men were imprisoned for being out of harmony with the religious laws of the land. That fact proved a union of church and state, and that punishment was religious persecution. In our own day, again and again, men have been arrested, fined, and imprisoned for performing the most quiet, orderly, and unobtrusive labor on Sunday. This, too, proves a union of church and state, and this punishment also is religious persecution. So, while our nation was founded upon right principles in the matter of religious freedom, and while our States have declared the rights of man and the freedom of the people in the matter of religious belief and practise, the position of both the States and the nation is being undermined by a subtle influence seeking to unite again the functions of religion and the state. The beginning of this blighting, destructive campaign will be pointed out in another article.