p. 10 | The Menace of a False Religion by C. M. S.

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Apr 11, 1912

The Menace of a False Religion

By C. M. S.

The rapid formation of organizations in this country that have set themselves to accomplish by force a recognition of religious practises is a certain indication that the day is not far distant when that counterfeit of the gospel, religion by force, will be inaugurated in America.

The gospel of Jesus Christ is founded in freedom, the freedom of the individual. “Come unto me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest,” is not a command, but an invitation. “Whosoever will, let him take the water of life freely,” recognizes the right of human choice in the matter of worship. If to any one belonged the right to compel worship, it would be to our Heavenly Father, but those words last quoted are his words, spoken by his Son for him.

The gospel of Christ and religion by force are the antipodes of each other. Paganism had long driven men as mental and spiritual slaves under the lash of a compulsory religion; but the gospel of Jesus Christ is built on this principle: “If any man hear my words, and believe not, I judge him not: for I came not to judge the world, but to save the world.” But religion by force judges, condemns, and executes; and the spirit that would revive that practise is alive in our day. It is this generation’s heritage from the ages of paganism. The principles of it came with our ancestors in the “Mayflower,” found deep rootage in the colonial establishments, and have found some to keep them alive through all the years from then till now. The attempt to unite all denominations for the enforcement of a sabbath upon all the people without regard to their rights, either temporal or spiritual, is as surely a heritage of paganism and medievalism as any that has come down to us. Force in religion is as old as Babylon, yea as old as the murder of Abel by his brother; and wherever we see combinations of men setting themselves the task of bringing about conformity in religion by compulsion of law, we see a repetition in spirit, and ofttimes in letter, of the intolerance of the first murderer, for cause of religion, and of the oppression and persecution of men for religious belief in all the ages since.

In the imperial nations which call themselves Christian, religion by force is one of the chief tenets in the creed of national progress. He who does not bow to that creed is disloyal to his country. In Russia he who forsakes the Orthodox faith is looked upon as disloyal to both his emperor and his native land. It is a punishable offense. What the new order of things may bring about in Russia we can not foretell. That it will result in the separation of church and state and the granting of real religious liberty is almost too much to believe possible; and yet no people are free who are not free to worship God according to the dictates of conscience. In view of that fact, the people of America should look with alarm upon the very first experiment in the matter of religious legislation. They should look with alarm upon any court decision declaring either the States or the nation Christian. They should look with alarm upon the growing sentiment among religious bodies toward the enactment of Sunday laws, or even laws for the closing of saloons on Sunday. These are the thin edge of the wedge of religious legislation. What the result would be when such movements are carried to their logical conclusion has already been written in the history of the dark ages, in the persecution to the death of the best people the world possessed.

Religion by force has never been confined to one empire or hemisphere. Its principles are the same, its results the same, in all lands and among all peoples. In the pagan mind religion and the sword were closely related, and it was not an uncommon thing for one heathen nation to conquer another, and force the conquered nation to worship the gods of the conquerors. Religion by force, the “gospel of powder and ball,” the “gospel of the sword in one hand and the Bible in the other,” is based upon the same idea. The principle of the Christian religion is, “Choose you this day whom ye will serve.” It is a matter of free choice. The principle of that false religion is, Choose the religion we bring, keep the sabbath we keep, or feel the fury of the sword and the penalty of the law.

Between the latter principle and the principle underlying the gospel of Christ there is a great gulf fixed which no man can bridge. On the one side of that gulf is the throne of everlasting love; on the other is the throne of the arbitrary despot, on which sits Lucifer, the fallen light-bearer. His church is the church of force; his ministers the armed warriors who carry “the Bible in one hand” and the implements of death and destruction in the other. But God, who has warned men against an unequal yoking with unbelief, has never yoked himself, his government, or his people with the proponents of any such cruel and ghastly policy. The ministers of “religion by force” smite with the mailed fist of the law; the ministers of the gospel of Christ turn the fist into an open hand for the bestowal of blessings. The one bruises; the other binds up whatever bruising the other had done. The one wields the sword; the other binds up its wounds. The one compels enmity; the other wins hearts and souls.

Force and Christianity, imperialism and the kingdom of Christ, are as far apart as the east and the west, as death and life. Religion by force has been tried in every nation, and its course through every portion of the world has been marked by blood and oppression; but the menace of that same condition hangs over the people of America to-day in the massing of the strength of great religious organizations to force religious practises upon the people.

There is a better way; there is a purer, kinder gospel; there is a King who never does and never will oppress; and they who espouse the cause of enforced religion are working against his kingdom instead of for it, and must be classed as his enemies. The gospel of Christ is the gospel of love and brotherhood; the Author of that gospel is the Maker of the heavens and the earth, the Prince of Peace, the everlasting Father, whose house is the habitation of love, whose throne is set in the hearts of those who are his. Into his service oppression never comes, and out of his hands go none of the cruel arrows that wound the hearts of men. The final triumph of the kingdom of God in this earth is a triumph which uproots all things that bruise and oppress, and that misrepresent the mission of our Father in the earth. It is not a menace, but an everlasting boon. As God is not a God of oppression, he will not countenance in his service that which oppresses or those who oppress. Is it too much to say that he will not accept into his kingdom finally those who have misrepresented his character in the earth? It will be a fearful thing to hear the words from the Saviour’s lips: “I never knew you: depart from me.” So the religion of force is not only a menace to those who are oppressed by it, but it is a menace to the eternal prospects of those who use it in this world, even though they profess to use it in the service of God.

C. M. S.