Religious Liberty Campaign
By C. S. Longacre
THE religious liberty campaign which began January 8 at Walla Walla and was carried into all the principal cities and towns in the North Pacific Union Conference and then to the principal cities in the Pacific Union, has just come to a close with its final meetings held in Los Angeles, Cal. This was my first experience in this kind of work, and yet I never enjoyed any work more than I did this pioneer campaigning. The Lord wonderfully blessed in giving us good-sized audiences and most attentive and interested hearers. They were the most expressive and responsive class of people I ever addressed. The Sunday-law advocates have often declared that the people on the Coast are a lot of pagans because they have no Sunday laws on their statute-books; but I was happily surprised when I reached the Coast to find a people who compared most favorably with their Christian cousins in the East, and who were able to give good reasons for not having Sunday laws on their statute-books. They were proud that they did not have such laws, and the people of the State of California regard it as a high honor to have their State government patterned after the national Constitution and the true American idea of civil and religious liberty. I found that the religious liberty secretaries in both union and local conferences are wide-awake and aggressive men. They rendered most valuable assistance in this campaign. Everywhere the common people gladly heard us, and in some places even the ministers could not speak too highly of our efforts to enlighten the people, especially along the lines of Romanism. I am thoroughly convinced that similar campaigns should be carried into all our cities and towns in every union conference in the United States and Canada. I was surprised at the interest which is manifest among the people of all classes in the principles of religious liberty and in the encroachments of Romanism. Invariably as our meetings continued the audiences increased and the people manifested greater enthusiasm. There is no doubt that now is the time for us to educate the people and to plan for aggressive work instead of waiting until we have to take a defensive attitude. There was a splendid interest manifested and good-sized audiences were present in our meetings in Oakland, Mountain View, and Los Angeles. I also held meetings for the benefit of our own people at Lodi, St. Helena, Pacific Union College, San Fernando, Berkeley, Glendale, Keene (Tex.), and College View (Nebr.). Members of the Guardians of Liberty attended in each place where we held public lectures, and were anxious that these things might be proclaimed to their followers. I believe we have a duty toward this large body of truth seekers. I do not believe that we should let their appeal for more light go by unheeded. We ought to have a score of able men carrying on this kind of campaign through all our cities and towns, and wherever a large interest is awakened it ought to be followed by the work of able ministers in those conferences. A rich harvest of souls would undoubtedly be the result of such efforts. I have seen some splendid opportunities for this kind of follow-up work. I trust that another campaign may be instituted immediately after the World's Christian Citizenship Conference at Portland and the World's Christian Endeavor Convention at San Francisco have been held. Good results would certainly follow, and the strong impressions which these conventions create would, to a very large degree, be counteracted. We must give diligent consideration to some of these important questions at our department meetings during the General Conference. All our religious liberty secretaries, in both the union and local conferences, should plan to attend these important council meetings, as we are hoping with their assistance to lay some definite plans and give some important instruction for this kind of work.