Religious Toleration in America
By Editor
IN a recent speech at Salem, Ore., the chief executive of the nation took occasion to express his views touching the fundamental American principle of the separation of church and state. In connection with a reference to the G. A. R. and the members of the second Oregon regiment, who fought in the Philippines, the president said:— It is not only the lesson of what these men did in war that we need to learn, my fellow citizens, it is the applied lesson of citizenship that they teach. Fundamentally, in this country we are free from the dreadful curse of religious hatred and persecution which has worked so much evil in times past in the world at large. We realize that a corner-stone in the building of this government must be not merely religious toleration before the law, but a genuine religious toleration among ourselves. We in America are to be held thrice blessed that the chance for animosity between Jew and Gentile, or between Christian sects, has become infinitesimal to the vanishing point. Once more, not only must there be no line of demarcation among our people on grounds of creed or grounds of sect, but there must be no line of demarcation drawn among them on grounds of class or occupation. There is but one safe rule to follow in public life, as in private life, and that is the old, old rule of treating your neighbor as you would like your neighbor to treat you,—the old rule of decency, of honesty, of square dealing as between man and man. Just so long as our people keep character, so long as they have the fundamental virtues of decency, of courage, of common sense, just so long we may rest assured that this country will go onward and upward until it occupies a place among the nations of mankind such as has never before been known since the days when history was first written. These words set forth the American ideal of civil freedom, rather than the conditions which actually exist. For as those holding to an unpopular belief well know, “the chance for animosity” toward them on the part of the larger religious bodies is very far indeed from having reached the vanishing point. It is to be hoped that the influence of the nation’s chief executive will be felt in behalf of the preservation in American law of the governmental ideals which he upholds. Such words from such a source will bear a great deal of repetition in this country.