Sunday Baseball and Religious Liberty
RECENTLY an effort has been made by the New York Sabbath Committee, an association of clergymen, to prohibit Sunday baseball playing in Brooklyn. Several players were arrested, and the case was brought before Justice Gaynor, of the higher court of Brooklyn, who dismissed it on the ground that such games, when played at a distance from residences or churches, did not constitute a disturbance of the repose or religious liberty of the community, as had been alleged in the complaint under which the proceedings were taken. Justice Gaynor gave a decision covering the case, in which he set forth the fact that the American government is a government of laws, and not of men, and severely arraigned the police for having repeatedly set themselves above the law. It was decided sixteen years ago in New York, he said, that Sunday baseball playing is not a crime in itself, and becomes such only when it interrupts the repose and religious liberty of the community, and this decision is binding to-day. It is necessary to show that such an interruption has been occasioned; but the facts in connection with this case showed that no one complained of any disturbance, while the throng which assembled to witness the game testified clearly as to the sentiment of the community on the question. If the game was a disturbance to them, then evidently they desired to be disturbed. In conclusion Justice Gaynor said:— It is practically the unanimous sentiment of the religious and God-fearing people of the community that it is far better for our growing boys and young men who have to work indoors all the week for a living to go into the fields on Sunday after attending church, and participate in or witness good, elevating, healthy physical exercise, than to be driven instead to go to dance gardens, drinking places, pool-rooms, and worse places; and there is no one trying to stir up some obscure or obsolete statute against that opinion except those who rule the police. At the instigation of the Sabbath Committee the case will be carried to the appellate court, where the committee hope to have Justice Gaynor’s decision overruled. According to the New York Times, “Mr. Clarke was influenced to take this course, according to his own statement, by the visit of several ministers to his office yesterday morning, who asked him to proceed with the case. They argued that the playing of baseball on Sunday took young men away from places of worship.” This statement expresses the real opposition of the clergymen to Sunday ball playing and the real reason of their support of Sunday laws. They see in Sunday games and Sunday work something which will interfere with the religious observance of the day. They would have a civil law to prevent young people from being lured away from church services on Sunday. Why not also a law which would operate to entice young people to the church? or even compel them to go to church? If the principle is just in the first case, it is just in the last, for it is the same principle throughout. But this principle was repudiated when the American government adopted the Protestant principle of the separation of church and state.