The Rise and Fall of Religious Liberty in America
By C. M. S.
The Church Losing in Religion While Winning in Politics
In the same year in which the Supreme Court of the United States made the declaration that “this is a Christian nation” those in charge of the preparations for the World’s Columbian Exposition at Chicago were putting forth earnest efforts for a large government appropriation. A certain portion of the religious element of the country was determined that no aid should be given unless the gates of the exposition should be closed on Sunday. There was much debate over the matter, and the discussion took such a religious turn that the chaplain of the Senate made this statement:— During the debate you might have imagined yourself in a general council or assembly or synod or conference, so pronounced was one senator after another. Petitions asking for the closing of the exposition on Sunday, and petitions urging Congress to have nothing to do with the matter, poured into the Capitol. It was recognized, even by the congressmen who were debating the matter, that they were dealing with a religious question. Yet the discussion went on, and the appropriation was finally voted with the proviso that the gates be closed on Sunday. The stimulus to such a course was apparent throughout. For instance, the petitions sent in to Congress by the Presbyterian churches of New York contained the following threat:— Resolved, That we do hereby pledge ourselves and each other, that we will from this time henceforth refuse to vote for or support for any office or position of trust, any member of Congress, either senator or representative, who shall vote for any further aid of any kind to the World’s Fair except on conditions named in these resolutions.—Congressional Record, May 25, 1892, page 5144. The condition referred to in the above extract was that the gates be closed on Sunday. There is no question but that the Christian-nation dictum of the Supreme Court made these petitioners bold to attempt to carry through, by threat and by an appeal to unworthy and selfish motives on the part of congressmen, what they feared they could not accomplish by appeal or argument; and the world was made to witness the sad spectacle of the professed church of Christ threatening to boycott and blacklist the national legislators if they voted according to their own convictions, as they had sworn to do, rather than according to the wishes of a portion of their constituency, as they were ordered to do. In other words, these senators and representatives were asked to perjure themselves in the interests of this militant church party, and threatened with the extinction of their political career if they refused to yield. That some of these legislators understood what it meant, and had so poor an appreciation of the responsible position to which they had been called by the people as to yield to the threat, is shown by the following extract from a speech by Senator Hiscock, of New York:— If I had charge of this amendment in the interest of the Columbian Exposition, I would write the provision for the closure in any form that the religious sentiment of the country demands, and not stand here hesitating or quibbling about it. . . . I say to the junior senator from Illinois [Mr. Palmer], he had better yield to this sentiment, and not let it go out to the country that there is the slightest doubt that if this money shall be appropriated, the exposition will be closed on Sunday. . . . I should make this closure provision satisfactory to those petitioners who have memorialized us against the desecration of the Lord’s day.—Congressional Record, July 13, 1892, page 6755. On the same day Senator Hawley, of Connecticut, in urging the Senate to yield to this threat-demand-petition, said:— No wise statesman or monarch of modern times, no satrap of Rome, would have thought it wise to fly in the face of a profound conviction of the people he governed, no matter if he thought it a profound error. It is not wise statesmanship to do it. . . . Now, if gentlemen repudiate this, if they desire to reject it, if they deny that this is in the true sense of the word a religious nation, I should like to see the disclaimer put in black and white, and proposed by the Congress of the United States. Write it. How would you write it? How would you deny that from the foundation of the country, through every fiber of their being, this people has been a religious people? Word it, if you dare; advocate it, if you dare. How many who voted for it would ever come back here again?—None, I hope.—Congressional Record, July 13, page 6759. The strongest argument used by Senator Hawley in this impassioned plea was the argument of expediency, and his peroration was a sinister threat of a senatorial blacklist—a far remove from the noble motives that actuated the founders of this republic when they pledged their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor for the principles they had espoused. He should have been answered to the effect that the nation had already replied to his heated questions in an expression found in the treaty with Tripoli, consummated in 1797, which reads:— The government of the United States of America is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion. And, according to Article VI of the Constitution of the United States, that treaty is a part of the supreme law of the land, and that declaration is a part of the national purpose. The Constitution also answers the Senator’s questions in its first amendment by prohibiting Congress from passing any law respecting the establishment of religion. “How would you write it?” asks the Senator. It is already written. “How many who voted for it would ever come back here again?” That was the least of George Washington’s considerations when he signed that treaty, and he is probably as near to the hearts of the American people as any who voted to bribe the Chicago Exposition to keep Sunday. It was during Washington’s administration, too, that the first amendment to the Constitution was passed. The demoralizing effect of the campaign for national Sunday legislation was shown also in the House of Representatives in reference to the same question. A member of that body, in an interview with a Chicago Daily Post representative, said:— The reason we shall vote for it is, I will confess to you, a fear that, unless we do, the church folks will get together, and knife us at the polls; and—well you know we all want to come back, and we can’t afford to take any risks. Do you think it will pass the House?—Yes; and the Senate, too. We are all in the same boat. I am sorry for those in charge of the Fair; but self-preservation is the first law of nature, and that is all there is about it. What a spectacle! The best interests of the state, the fundamental principles of the nation, sacrificed to sordid self-interest. The greed for political position overshadows the most vital interests of the nation, which are tossed aside to make way for an unworthy personal ambition. But the sad result of this religio-political campaign does not cease with those against whom the threats of political boycott were made. This yielding of legislators under pressure seems to have had an equally demoralizing effect upon the campaigners themselves, as will be seen by the following. The final passage of the bill making the government contribution to the Chicago World’s Fair contingent upon the closing of the gates of the exposition on Sunday, was hailed by the president of the American Sabbath Union in these words:— The form of the law is happy. It gives a premium of $2,500,000 on doing right. It proves in a concrete way that “godliness hath great gain.” The appropriation did set a premium on something, and that something was the outward performance of a religious act; but that godliness was in any way increased thereby is not possible of demonstration. The quintessence of the whole procedure was simply this: The6World’s Columbian Exposition (and all such others that have received government appropriations on similar conditions) accepted a bribe for the observance of Sunday—went through the motions of a religious act for pay—and the advocates of Sunday legislation are rejoicing in the bribe-giving and the bribe-taking, and calling it a victory for righteousness. This is one of those victories that are worse than defeat; for the immorality of the procedure has been clothed with a robe of “civic righteousness,” and the people and the clergy themselves have been blinded to the iniquity of it. Such seed sown in such soil can never bring forth fruit for the kingdom of God; and the religious kingdom which they expect to build upon such a basis will go down to perdition through the rottenness of its own foundation. The second sad result of the success of that threat-petition is the strengthening and invigorating of the political propensities of the campaigners. Great encouragement was given them when they succeeded in having the Sunday-closing proviso attached to the appropriation for the World’s Fair. They began to feel their power as a political factor in the nation, and, intoxicated with that “wine of Babylon” (confusion of the sacred and profane), planned for greater things. Said Rev. J. D. Sands, pastor of the Seventh United Presbyterian church of Pittsburg, Pa., soon after the passage of the Sunday-provisoed appropriation bill:— That the church has weight with great political or governing bodies, has been demonstrated most effectually in the late World’s Fair matter, when the United States Senate, the highest body in the country, listened to the voice of religion, and passed the World’s Fair appropriation bill with the church-instituted proviso that the gates of the great exposition should not be opened upon Sunday. That grand good fact suggests to the Christian’s mind that if this may be done, so may other equally needful measures. The church is gaining power continually, and its voice will be heard in the future much oftener than in the past. Rev. H. H. George, of Patterson, N. J., said the same year, and concerning the same matter:— I have learned that we hold the United States Senate in our hands. At the National Reform convention at Winona Lake, Ind., on Aug. 15, 1906, Dr. William Parsons, of Philadelphia, Pa., in describing the methods of his brethren in securing Sunday laws, said:— In order to get the legislation we want, we must first make a public demand for it. There is a scientific way of doing that. Legislators are not, to any large extent, natural-born reformers. Many of them are out for graft, and you have got to be rough-and-tumble with them. They like to be on the sunny side of the political hedge. They are there for what there is in it. First you have to fight such men, then you have to forgive them, and then you have to use them. . . . Then you have to get after the politician. You have to promise and threaten and wheedle him, and make him thoroughly understand that if he votes against your measure, he won’t be on the sunny side of the hedge any longer. Then you have got to get some one to introduce your measure, and then you must put on the screws, put on the pressure. That work of putting on the pressure must be done. The other fellow does it, and you must. It is strange, if such work “must be done,” that our Saviour should have omitted it when he gave his final instructions to his followers. The fact that he gave no such commands, instituted no such work, eschewed all such operations, and repudiated utterly the doctrine of force in the upbuilding of his kingdom, stamps this work of the ecclesiastical politician as outside the pale of his recognition, and antagonistic to his purpose. The compulsion of the state by religious combinations is not only dangerous to the religious liberties of the people, but is destructive of true religious impulses in the hearts of those who bring it about. It is a scheme of human devising that makes mockery of religious forms, encourages hypocrisy for a reward, and teaches dishonorable legislators the political advantage of a perjured oath.