Not Bigoted or Belated

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Feb 11, 1909

Not Bigoted or Belated

A BIGOT is one who is unreasonably intolerant of opinions which conflict with his own. Bigotry has to do with belief and opinions rather than with political schemes or political actions. The New York Independent of November 19 declares editorially that the opposition to the election of a Catholic president in this country is either bigoted or belated. That the discussion of the matter is not belated, is proved by the fact that such a political accomplishment was never so near to a realization as it is at the present time. The possibility of such a thing grows more real with each new turn of the wheel. This is due to the increasing influence of the Catholic Church in this country and the increasing number of Catholic voters. The opposition is not bigoted, because it does not have to do with belief or opinion, but with the political aspirations of that church. Were the Methodist Church to seek to control the state, that it might use the power of the state to accomplish its own exaltation and the enforcing of its own religious practises upon the people, at the same time teaching its members that their allegiance to it in its political aspirations must take precedence over their allegiance to the state, and that they must labor to bring the Constitution of the nation into harmony with the ruling principles of the Methodist Church,—if it were doing all this, the people would have a right to protest against the election of a Methodist to the highest office in the state; and their protests would not be bigoted either. If the people refuse to learn that the Roman Church is a political machine, as well as a religious system, they are bound to assist it in accomplishing its purpose, the domination of the world.