The United Christian Party
By L. A. S.
THE New York Sun calls attention to the formation of “a new political party,” which last month held a convention at St. Louis, Mo., preparatory to putting in the field a ticket for the coming presidential campaign. “It is called the United Christian Party,” says the Sun, “and its purpose is to secure a specific recognition of Christianity by the government, and the enforcement of Christian principles in the laws. If it can induce either the Democrats or the Republicans at their national conventions to support the demands of its religious platform, it will agree to withdraw its own candidates, and vote for those of the consenting party.” The Sun states that the aim of this party is to secure a specific recognition of God in the national constitution, and makes allusion to the Reformed Presbyterian Church, which, because of the failure of the constitution to recognize the Deity, regards the federal government as an atheistic institution, under which it is sinful to vote or to perform the duties of a citizen. The Reformed Presbyterian Church and the United Christian Party occupy nearly identical grounds. This is not, as the Sun states, a new party, but a revival of a party which made its appearance some years ago, and at one time put in the field nominees for president and other federal offices. It seems that the present is deemed an opportune time for a revival of the effort to bring about an open alliance between politics and religion. The Sun mentions that it finds “in a Presbyterian paper of Virginia expressions of sympathy with the objects of this new party, though it looks on the formation of a distinct organization for their attainment as ‘mistaken or useless.’” “This paper,” says the Sun, “speaks of ‘the extreme positions that have been taken by state and federal government in enforcing so-called personal liberty and in the separation of religion from the state,’ as being a grievance greatly felt by many religious people, who, because of laxity in Sunday observance, the running of Sunday trains on railroads, and ‘the expulsion of the Bible from the schools,’ are asking if ‘we have not gone too far, and are not sowing seeds of moral destruction and anarchy.’” The lapse toward moral destruction and anarchy is painfully evident in the religious world at this time; but nothing is better calculated to hasten the downward plunge than is an alliance of religion with politics. L. A. S.