RELIGION IN POLITICS by Editor

Seventh-day Adventist Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Nov 25, 1880

RELIGION IN POLITICS.

By Editor

A SHORT time since we noticed the fact that a strict Roman Catholic had been nominated for mayor of New York City. This nomination called forth various opinions from both religious and political papers. The following from the S. F. Chronicle of Nov. 21, we consider a candid statement of the facts in the case:—

"The introduction of sectarian prejudices and sectarian feelings into politics is a thing to be deplored and dreaded. Yet it is a danger which is not easily to be avoided. Most unfortunately the last municipal election in the city of New York seems to have turned in some measure upon a sectarian issue. John Kelly, the great Tammany leader, is a zealous Roman Catholic, and under the terms of his treaty with the anti-Tammany branch of the party, he persisted in selecting Mr. Grace, a well-known member of that communion, as his candidate for mayor. Of course the religious belief of the candidate could not, under ordinary circumstances, be urged as an objection against him. But it has for years been generally believed that the Roman Catholic hierarchy cherishes a deep hostility to the American common-school system. No sooner was Mr. Grace nominated for mayor than the friends of the public schools in New York took the alarm. Attention was called to the singular fact that owing to the political strength of the Roman Catholic element in New York, and the subserviency of the Democracy to that element, there are already more Roman Catholic teachers in the public schools of the metropolis than the number of teachers belonging to any other five religious denominations.

"On the Sunday preceding the election Father O'Farrell from the pulpit of St. Peter's church exhorted his hearers to support Mr. Grace, and in the same discourse denounced a particular newspaper, the New York Herald, because some of its editorial utterances admitted of a construction unfavorable to the Church.

"The significance attached to the nomination of Mr. Grace, arises from the fact that the New York City Board of Education consists of twenty-one members, seven of whom are appointed each year by the mayor. Hence, in the two years of his term of office he can place in office fourteen of the twenty-one members of the Board, which, as thus constituted, could carry out the policy of supporting the parochial schools of the church out of the city treasury. We repeat, that under ordinary circumstances the religious faith of a candidate for office in the United States ought not to be even so much as referred to. But when a particular denomination avows a distinct line of policy in regard to the common-school system hostile to the whole genius and spirit of that system, and hostile to the principle of free, non-sectarian public education, the matter assumes entirely a new aspect."