p. 5 | Religious Liberty and Free Schools

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Washington, D. C. · May 11, 1905

Religious Liberty and Free Schools

The religious schools controversy exists to-day, with some variation of form, in the United States, Canada, and Great Britain. The situation in Great Britain gives the advantage to the established church, and to this there has been “passive resistance” on the part of non-conformists. Referring to the agitation for greater religious freedom in that country, the St. Paul Pioneer Press says:—

There is really no hope for genuine and permanent religious liberty in England so long as the alliance is maintained between church and state—between anglicanism and authority. There is an absolute incompatibility between soul-freedom and the recognition by a nation, through its government, of one form of religious faith as entitled to greater consideration than another. The true route to a free-school system, such as England needs, is through a divorce of government and episcopacy. That would not only carry with it the abolition of sectarian control over the schools, but would place the disestablished church in England on the same high level of independence and usefulness that is occupied by the Protestant Episcopal Church in America. The American churches of the Anglican order are better supported, more progressive, are doing, numbers considered, a greater amount of Christian work than the government-endowed, government-ridden churches of England.