Religion and the Government

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Dec 17, 1908

Religion and the Government

SOME truths concerning the proper relation between religion and the government have been stated anew in a clear manner by a writer in the Chicago Israelite. From his article we take the following paragraph:—

The government of this great American nation is secular. It has nothing to do with religion. It is simply neutral on that question. For all that, it is not godless or atheistic, as has so frequently been declared by bigoted creedists. It is about time that narrow-minded religionists were recognizing this fact, and were ceasing to attempt to foist their peculiar religious conceptions upon our secular state institutions. If this great, democratic government is based upon any legislation at all, it is grounded on the spirit of the Old Testament laws. It was a wise provision of the fathers and founders of our country and Constitution to divorce the state from religion. They knew what an alliance between church and state had meant for the Old World nations. They knew of the wars, the hatreds and animosities to which it had given rise, and they did not want to make this free nation the battle-ground for similar bloodsheds, and so they declared that state and church shall forever remain separate. Priests and clergymen do not seem to be satisfied with the immunity from persecution because of this wise provision of a separation between church and state, and are therefore forever clamoring for a marriage between them. In season and out of season they are calling upon the state to help them in the work which it is their particular province to perform. Now they are asking for the Bible and religious instruction in the public schools. Now they are deluging the legislative bodies with petitions for an introduction of the name of God and Jesus in the Constitution. They little know that when they appear before the state in the guise of a mendicant, they are convicting themselves of incompetency. It is the church and the home that should give religious instruction, not the secular schools. It is about time for the church to cease these beggar methods, and buckle on its armor and show a militant energy in the accomplishment of the distinctive tasks which have been given it to perform.

If all those who desire the prosperity both of the church and of the state would adopt the principles here laid down, the repetition of some of the terrible chapters of the world’s history might possibly be avoided. We would that Christians might accept the Christian idea of civil government.