National Reformism Self-Expounded
By C. M. S.
A Warfare Against the Nation’s Fundamental Principles
Over and over again at this institute at Winona Lake, Ind., is heard the declaration, “We are as much opposed to a union of church and state as any one can possibly be;” but over and over the declaration is positively contradicted by the teaching of every speaker in the institute. The speakers give their own definition of a union of church and state, and then oppose the seeming substance of the mythical definition. Said Dr. J. S. Martin, general superintendent of the National Reform Association: “While I am opposed to the union of church and state, I am just as much opposed to the actual divorcing of the state from religion. You can put the same principle into the two institutions without uniting the two institutions at all.” And for the people who listened to this declaration, that settled the matter. But the church is religion personified, religion in action. Religion is the church’s very life and breath. Take religion out of the church, and you take the soul out of the body. A church without religion is only a society, a club, a lyceum. Then to take that which is the breath, the life, the soul, of the church and unite it with the state is to unite the church and the state as truly as union can be formed between any two things; and this fact is made more apparent when we consider another fact, that which is this: When religion is united with the state, the church, which is the visible expression of organized religion, proceeds at once to dominate the state in all its functions; for who but the church can formulate the religious principles which are to be united with the state? The church considers itself in a position to give expert advice upon religious matters. The church, under such an arrangement, determines for the state what is religious and what is irreligious, and therefore what the state must do and what it must not do to have its acts harmonize with its religious profession. That puts every act of the state under the direct supervision of the church; and as the leaders of the church are the ministers, that gives us a government by the ministers for the church, instead of a government by the people for the people. That puts us back to the colonial days of Massachusetts and Virginia, with the church in the governmental saddle, riding roughshod over the rights and the consciences of the people. They did it in the New England theocracy and in Virginia and other colonies; and the closer the union between religion and the state, the lower sank the individual conscience and the individual’s rights in the eyes of the rulers, and the higher mounted the domineering oppression of that heaven-dishonoring political arrangement. That the exponents of this method of governing the people are willing to act in the capacity of spiritual advisers and directors to the government is clearly shown in the following declaration of Dr. J. S. Martin:— It is “up to us” to say what the religion of this country shall be. In a country where the majority of the people are Christians, it seems to me we must decide in favor of the Christian religion. That is in perfect keeping with the declaration made by another National Reformer:— Our remedy for all these malefic influences is to have the government simply set up the moral law, and recognize God’s authority behind it, and lay its hand on any religion that does not conform to it.—Rev. M. A. Gault. This is the logical outcome of the other, and this is what they did under the theocratical governments of the American colonies. Every religion but theirs was out of harmony with the law of God, as they interpreted it; and they laid their hands on it most vigorously. It was “up to” them to say what the religion of the state should be, and they said it. The majority of their descendants are ashamed to-day of what those guardians of the state’s religion said, and of the manner in which they put it into force with the pains and penalties that always accompany such a régime. But the National Reform Association is reaching far back into American history and dragging out of its grave the skeleton of that fearful false theocratical system, clothing it again with flesh and blood, and seeking to breathe into it the breath of life, that it may go forth again to wither and blight and trample on and destroy the most sacred rights of human beings. It was buried when the national Constitution was adopted, but the National Reform Association does not propose to let it stay buried, nor to let the great Constitution which accomplished its death retain the vigorous and righteous principles which accomplished that result. Said Dr. J. S. McGaw at this institute:— Our political creed is Christian, and the Constitution should express it. If the political creed of this country is Christian, and the Constitution is so altered as to express that political Christian creed, what have we but the establishment5of the Christian religion as the religion of this nation? There can be no avoiding the issue; the result of the National Reform Association’s policy will be to unite church and state in this country, establish the Christian religion as the law of the land, throw to the winds the constitutional safeguards of the rights of conscience, and make a sacerdotal government the overlord of every man’s religious belief. If it is, as Dr. Martin declares, “up to” them to say that the Christian religion shall be the national religion in this country, it is equally their prerogative to say what branch of the Christian religion shall be thus recognized and established. If the right be granted to establish religion, the right to define that religion can not be denied. Upon such a hypothesis, we find ourselves at once confronted with an established church and religion enforced by law. That is what threw the shadow of sorrow, oppression, and death over the Old World for twelve centuries; and it is to that we must attribute the religious despotism which held sway in America during the first years of her history. They profess to see no danger in the program outlined. A Baptist in the audience at the forenoon session on August 17, when an invitation was given to all to ask questions, asked Dr. Martin this question: “Where are you going to put on the brakes in the matter of state religion?” Dr. Martin replied:— I stated the other day that just as Christianity itself gives us the man who is most thoughtful and most considerate of the rights of his fellow men, so would the Christian state be most thoughtful and most considerate of the rights of the individual. If the state accepts the religion of Jesus Christ as its religion, and seeks to be governed by the will of God, you can safely trust that state. I have never found it necessary to put any brakes on the true Christian religion. I am free to admit that you will find some difficulty in administering the affairs of the nation upon that basis; but you will find difficulty in administering the affairs of any country. I think you will find less difficulty in administering on the Christian basis than on any other. I am not afraid of persecution or infringement upon the rights of individual citizens under a Christian administration. The state would have to be the interpreter of the law of God as it applies to men, and it might make mistakes. They have been made in the past; but on the whole, I think that is the best we can do. With such a position every student of history must disagree, and no lover of Christian liberty can accept such a premise. There is a vast difference between a Christian man living the principles of his religion among his neighbors, but powerless to enforce his principles upon them, and a state with an established religion interpreting “the law of God as it applies to men,” and then enforcing its interpretation of that law. The professed Christian is not always as considerate as he ought to be of the rights of others in matters of religious faith and practise; and no state with an established church has ever shown a clean record in the matter of consideration for the rights of men in that regard. Find a state that is legally joined to religion (and it matters not which dominates the other, the church or the state), and you find a state that is utterly unable to look with impartial eyes upon all its subjects in matters of conscience. This unfair treatment of men has been a characteristic of every nation of the world that has made alliance with any religion in the world; and the better the religion, the more that mesalliance has crushed the consciences and seared the souls of men; for the nearer true the religion, the stronger the hold it obtains upon the consciences of individuals, and the more cruel becomes the work of the state in enforcing its religious requirements. Every church that has thus been appropriated by the state, or that has thus appropriated the state, has declared itself to be the possessor of the true Christian religion. The fact that the organization thus clothed with authority was unchristian was quickly shown by its unchristian treatment of any and all who differed from the religio-political creed of the nation where such an arrangement obtained. Mr. Martin declares that a state which joins itself to religion would be “most thoughtful and most considerate of the rights of the individual.” Such a union was most perfectly consummated in the days of papal Rome; but thoughtfulness and consideration for the rights of the individual were never more completely lost sight of than during the period when that arrangement was most perfect. They had such a union in its perfection in the days of the New England theocracy and in early Virginia, and in neither place was the happiness, the property, or even the life of the individual secure unless he was a member of the religious-state organization. “You can safely trust that state,” says Dr. Martin. You can trust it to do certain things, and one of those things is to prescribe the religious faith and practise of all its subjects, and to compel compliance with its prescription; but trust it with its subjects’ right of conscience,—never! Dr. Martin has “never found it necessary to put any brakes on the true Christian religion.” But brakes are put upon the true Christian religion wherever that religion has been joined to the state and put under the restraint of a political creed. Wherever religion is made a matter of statutory law, a brake has been put upon it, for religion loses its very essence whenever it is legally enforced. The life is gone, and only the shell remains. What the doctor meant, however, was that he had no fears that the true Christian religion united with the state would ever trespass upon the rights of any; and that, therefore, with such a combination there was no necessity of any restriction whatever. The voice of our brothers’ blood cries from the ground in warning protest against the adoption of any such dangerous practise. It is always the party in power under such a government that possesses the “true Christian religion.” You can prove it by them; and as they possess “the true Christian religion,” all who differ from them are in serious error, and ought to be corrected for the sake of their souls’ eternal welfare. Being the party in power, it becomes their bounden duty to make the needed correction in the heretical individuals, for there is no one else to do it. No religion in the world when united with any governing power in the world is a safe custodian for the consciences of men. In so far as religion and political power are united, religion becomes drunken with power, and politics parades in the garb of hypocrisy. Each trespasses upon the rights of the other, and both trespass upon the rights of individuals. As a result of this all-round trespass, religious ritualism runs its colors to the masthead, a premium is set upon hypocrisy, and the best men and women in the country are oppressed in conscience and despoiled of their rights. This is the invariable teaching and the inerasable record of all history. God holds each individual accountable for his own choice; and he who attempts to choose for another in religious concerns and enforces his choice upon that other, interferes with the whole plan and purpose of God’s government; and that is what is done wherever state and religion unite. The theories propounded at this institute are diametrically opposed to every fundamental principle of the nation, revolutionary in purpose, and partaking in no degree whatever of that great balancing principle known as the golden rule. The leaders are willing that Seventh-day Adventists and Seventh-day Baptists “be allowed” to keep the seventh day; but offer no word of regret that Sabbath-keepers are compelled to lose one of the six working-days, and are thus deprived of one sixth of their earning capacity. They call that simply a “civil disability,” which we ought to endure willingly for conscience’ sake. There is with them no suggestion even of that apologetic half-way house of “exemption clauses.” Rest on Sunday, or take the consequences, is all they have to offer.