Religious Liberty Notes
By K. C. Russell
ELDER S. B. HORTON, president of the Louisiana Conference, writes, “The Lord has helped us thus far to quash the Sunday law movement in the last legislature,” and further reports that a committee of five ministers (of which he is one) has been appointed in New Orleans to investigate the question of introducing religious teaching in the public schools of that city. The “International Reform Bureau” held its annual meeting in this city April 2, at which Dr. Wilbur F. Crafts, superintendent of the bureau, scored the Seventh-day Adventists, claiming that they desire to stop the Sunday closing of saloons. He also referred to their opposition to the introduction of religious teaching in the public schools. It should be noted in this connection that the Seventh-day Adventists are in favor of closed saloons on all other days of the week as well as Sunday. “The order forbidding Sunday funerals in this archdiocese, which Archbishop Messmer has had under consideration for some time, will be issued in the near future,” reported the Milwaukee (Wis.) Sentinel of March 24. “Sunday funerals are not in conformity with the rules of the Catholic Church,” said the Rev. Bernard Traudt. “I believe that every priest in the archdiocese will be in sympathy with the order; for Sunday is a busy day at best, and there is no reason for holding funerals on that day.” One of the writers for the Hearst newspapers deals with the question of introducing the teaching of religion in the public schools of the District of Columbia. We quote the following: “Just as France has inserted the thin edge of the wedge between church and state, and is about to drive it home, certain estimable gentlemen are making a concerted effort to have the Christian religion taught in the public schools at our national capital. The pious proponents of this new rapprochement between church and state explain that the passages from the Scripture which they mean to put into their lectionary for use in the schools are not to be chosen because of their divine origin, but for their value as moral precepts.” The president of the Colorado Conference writes as follows concerning the religious liberty work in that conference: “Some time ago our conference19committee chose Elder F. M. Wilcox of the Colorado Sanitarium to act as a religious liberty secretary, and we hope to hear from his pen soon. Let us work while the day lasts. This precious boon that we call liberty, and that cost the life of many a good man, is being slowly but surely stolen from the people of the United States. When once those who are clamoring for oppressive laws in order to enforce their ideas of Sabbath-keeping (Sunday-keeping) attain their end, the tide of evil will just begin to flow, and it will not be long after that until the flood-gate of tyranny will be opened wide. Now is the time for us to bring the truth for these times before the people of Colorado.” ‘English nonconformists are still undergoing a kind of bloodless martyrdom in their passive resistance to the sectarian education act,’ says the New York Evening Post in a recent editorial paragraph. ‘Among the latest sufferers is the Rev. Campbell Morgan, who was summoned, the other day, before the Croydon bench, for nonpayment of rates. Preaching on the following Sunday, he spoke of the anomaly of his appearing ‘among the drunks and disorderlies at the bar of the nation’s law,’ and protested against being forced to contribute money for teaching the children of England doctrines that he believed to be ‘deadly and damnable heresies.’ He opposed state interference in matters of religion at any point whatever. . . . ‘The Bible and religion,’ he said, ‘can only be interpreted by spiritual men, and the state is incompetent to appoint an archbishop or a teacher who shall interpret religion in any school.’ Thus the war of the ‘passive resisters’ is against not merely the special school rates, but the unmistakable tendency toward disestablishment, or only a new manifestation of that ‘nonconformist conscience’ which is so formidable an element in English politics.’