p. 22 | Religious Liberty Notes by Frederick Bliss

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Sep 30, 1909

Religious Liberty Notes

By Frederick Bliss

Colorado Springs, Colo., is to have a church federation meeting the last of this month, and our religious liberty secretary is to be present and note the progress of events.

The Colorado Conference, at its late session, passed some ringing resolutions favorable to religious liberty efforts throughout its entire territory, including institutes, the circulation of Liberty and other literature, and the encouraging of brethren in the laity as well as in the ministry to write for the newspaper press on these themes.

The Connecticut Legislature has just been dealing lavishly in Sunday legislation. It has repealed some of the most obnoxious features of the centuries-old “blue-laws,” and has enacted some new features which the friends of blue-laws fear they shall not like, though it defines the Sunday and prohibits all secular sports and activities, “except such as are for the general welfare of the community.” The reformers fear that theaters and baseball will be let in as “for the general welfare.”

Brother Jay Nethery, one of our English workers, sends this clipping from a London paper: “The question of prohibiting Sunday gardening on allotments at Tonbridge came before the urban council again yesterday, when allotment managers were appointed. Mr. Donald Clark moved that their appointment be subject to their guaranteeing not to prohibit Sunday gardening. He said that no freedom-loving people would tolerate that kind of prohibition. The attempt to prohibit Sunday gardening had caused wide-spread ridicule, and, should it be referred to in Parliament, would fill them with a sense of shame. The council had been stigmatized as intolerant bigots. The resolution was lost by ten votes to three.” This shows that religious liberty is far from a reality in England at the present time.

A very interesting communication has within a few days come to our Religious Liberty Department from one of our laymen here in the East, in which he somewhat details an interview with one of the congressmen from his State, who had also been very prominent in labor circles, having held high offices in a national labor organization. Our brother found this gentleman holding very intelligent, and withal very correct, views of religious liberty and of the Sabbath. He said he had read the Bible from Genesis to Revelation in an effort to determine at what point the church departed from the true Sabbath. He was not favorable to any legislation which named the day on which one was to rest—only that there should be probably one rest day in seven. He gave our brother some new and important historical points, and assured him, as he left, that he should be compelled by conviction to stand with such a people as we on matters of this character.

Among the resolutions passed by the Southern Illinois Conference we find the following: “Whereas, Wide-spread efforts are being made to secure Sunday legislation, thus perverting the principles of religious liberty; therefore, Resolved, That we co-operate with the Religious Liberty Department of the General Conference in its efforts to check these perversions, and to present the truth to men in positions of public trust in the State and nation; and that we do all we can to educate the public on this question by the circulation of the magazine Liberty and other literature.”

FREDERICK BLISS.