Religious Liberty Notes by Frederick Bliss

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Jun 30, 1910

Religious Liberty Notes

By Frederick Bliss

BISHOP MORRISON (Protestant Episcopal), of Iowa, plainly sees the inevitable along lines of church federation. At his diocesan convention a few days ago he said: “The great ship of the Protestant churches of the world is caught in a current which is carrying it to an inevitable union. . . . Our church will either lead or be lost in the union. If there is anything true or vital or effective in our church beliefs, it will be God’s will that it shall live. . . . I foresee an apportionment of the foreign mission fields among the various Protestant churches, and the teaching of all will be the same.” According to the bishop, the world is to become a great brotherhood commonwealth, Christianity supplanting all other religions.

A BILL permitting amateur baseball throughout the State was introduced into the New York Assembly recently, and in spite of the outcry against it on the part of many ministers and church workers, it passed that chamber. In the senate, however, the bill was defeated.

OUR North Carolina Conference brethren are planning an unusually aggressive religious liberty campaign, in which they aim to reach the officials of State, city, and county, school boards, teachers, ministers, and the influential in different walks of life. Elder G. M. Brown has been secured by the conference to lead the State forces in this endeavor.

MAYOR FITZGERALD, of Boston, announces that he is in favor of an open Sunday for that city, as far as harmless sports are concerned, and declares he will submit a bill to the legislature next year providing for the legality of Sunday baseball, golf, tennis, etc. He also says he favors keeping all the playgrounds of the city open on that day.

THE NEW YORK Indicator informs us that six hearings on Sunday bills have been given by the Assembly during the present session, at every one of which Elder A. J. Clark, religious liberty secretary of the New York Conference, has been given his full share of time. These hearings have evidently been fruitful of good, as not one of the numerous bills has passed, except the one permitting amateur baseball on Sunday. Our good fortune has not been owing to any inactivity on the part of the National Reform forces, but possibly to their overactivity, as not a few assemblymen have freely expressed their dislike for the tactics employed by those who have been urging Sunday legislation.

AGITATION for state support of Catholic schools is again on. The Western Watchman (Catholic), in an article headed, “Renewing the Agitation,” reports what was said and done at the meeting of the Pittsburg section of the American Federation of Catholic Societies, and credits the secretary of Bishop Canevin as saying that the Catholic schools of Pittsburg have 22,000 children; that they are willing to support their schools, but not willing to save Pittsburg that enormous amount, and in addition be taxed to support the public schools, “to which in conscience they can not send their children.” Further, “The time is now coming when it is no longer expedient to submit to such conditions. . . . How long will we submit to this? . . . Just so long as we neglect to cast our votes at the polls for men who will give us a full measure of justice.” The Watchman then suggests: “The proper way to place the question before the American people is the so-called Fairbault plan, which contemplates making our parish schools state schools in everything but the teaching of the catechism. . . . If we want state money to support our schools, we must.”—and here, after detailing many unwelcome changes which must be made, the Watchman goes on to say that “Rome has decided that such a plan can be accepted by Catholics as a compromise; and it may be the American people may one day accept it.” Note the phrase, “as a compromise”!

ACCORDING to Congressman J. M. Graham, of Illinois, in a lecture delivered here a few nights ago, America has no other such guaranty for “civil liberty” and the perpetuation of a republican form of government as is afforded in the strength and development of the Catholic Church. “The submission to authority exacted by the church,” declared the lecturer, “does not in any sense restrict civil freedom.” “The so-called Dark Ages of the Old World, the outcome of a prolonged invasion of Europe by barbarians, is most unjustly laid at the door of the Catholic Church, which alone had accomplished all the work and borne all the burdens and martyrdoms of proselytizing in those gloomy and troublesome days—and emerged victorious.” This gives us an interesting view of the Catholic Church by one of her votaries now in Congress.

“THE theocracy that we are pleading for,” says Rev. Dr. William Parsons, conductor of the “reformer’s portfolio” department of the Christian Statesman, “is one that will make a republic a real integer of the kingdom of God, without impairing any man’s liberty, forcing his conscience, or infringing upon his inalienable rights. Hard?—Yes, and that because it has never yet been done. It is a new task.” The doctor evidently sees plainly enough that it never has been done, but does not seem to understand that the reason lies in its utter impossibility. He is for still experimenting on that line, though it would seem he could hardly fail to see that never were experiments so fraught with torture, blood, and ruin. “No man is a truer reformer,” he goes on to say, “than he who is trying to cultivate the ideas that will make the United States a Christian nation in its organization [in Constitution and statute of course] as it is now in sentiment and precedent.”

REV. S. F. SCOVEL, in a recent plea for the Bible and religion in the public school, quotes a prominent educator as reminding his fellows at a teachers’ institute that “the attendance on Sunday services and mid-week meetings is growing steadily less. The Sunday-schools fail to reach as many of the children in proportion to the population as they did in former days, and the scholars remain under their care a shorter time. The authority of pastors and religious teachers is not what it used to be; and even the Bible, for some at least, has lost much of its wholesome influence.” For this deplorable state of things neither Dr. Scovel nor the educator quoted sees any remedy outside of the dangerous and inefficient expedient of the introduction of religion as a part of class-room work in the public school. Strange they can not be brought to reliance upon more Bible religion in the home, the church, and the Sunday-school! With so much Higher Criticism undermining the influence of the Bible, it is not to be wondered at that the Sunday-schools are no longer able to attract the young people; but state-taught and state-enforced religion is the worst possible remedy that could be devised. FREDERICK BLISS.