Religious Liberty Notes

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Jan 27, 1910

Religious Liberty Notes

A governmental-religious question of some intricacy is again up for consideration in connection with the United States vital statistics. It seems that the classification of “Hebrews” works a hardship to the Jews of America when they wish to visit Russia, as on account of that listing they are in that unfriendly country not treated as Americans but as hated Jews. They have for years been contending that “no government has the right to inquire into any other question than that of political affiliation of persons visiting their shores.” It seems further that Congress has taken this view of it, and that our State Department has made it the subject of repeated diplomatic correspondence.

Rev. Dr. R. C. Wiley, one of the leading officials of the National Reform Association and on the editorial staff of its organ, the Christian Statesman, insists in a late article in that publication—while finding no small fault with the defects of the presidential and gubernatorial thanksgiving proclamations in that they do not specifically recognize the evangelically essential relations of Christ to the Christian conceptions of thanksgiving—that the real aim of these official recommendations is, after all, to “give public expression to the principles of national religion.” With all the faults of these unscriptural props to “national religion,” our National Reform friends dearly love them still.

This was one of the oft-heard plaints of one of the speakers at a recent meeting of a Pennsylvania ministerial association: “The craze for amusement is destroying the sacredness of the sabbath. We talk about the continental sabbath; we’ve got it now in America—Sunday baseball, Sunday golf, Sunday theaters, Sunday saloons, Sunday clubs, Sunday excursions—God save America!” And yet this same man—an intelligent gospel minister—is doing all he can to persuade his ministerial brethren and lay friends to do everything possible to obtain more Sunday laws, knowing this “craze” is abroad and will catch nine out of ten of the Sunday idlers who are thus turned by these laws upon defenseless communities.

An incidental admission of large import comes out in a late number of Extension (Catholic, Chicago) in an editorial comment on the contrast between Catholic and Protestant liberality to missions and benevolences, as suggested by the will of the late John S. Kennedy, of New York, which gives to Presbyterians and other Protestant missions and charities fifteen million dollars. The editorial, accounting for the lack of this sort of thing among wealthy Catholics, says: “Consequently, when they feel that local church interests are cared for; when they feel that it is better to divide among all the responsibility for that local work; when they feel that their gifts have the effect of injuring religion by depriving others of a chance to merit by giving; when they feel that our hospitals, orphan asylums, and protectories are often materially assisted by the State; then they conclude that there is no reason for leaving money to anything but the enrichment of their relatives.” It is a significant admission that in New York the State makes Catholic institutions the beneficiaries of its treasury.