Baptists Support French Religious Liberty

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Mar 7, 1907

Baptists Support French Religious Liberty

PROTESTANT denominations of America have been represented in France and Italy as upholding Rome in her struggle with the French government. Because of this the Baptist Ministers' Conference held in Baltimore on February 11, adopted resolutions declaring it to be the sense of the convention “that these reports are base misrepresentations, and that we hereby express our warmest sympathy with the French government in its heroic efforts to give to the French people religious liberty.” A copy of the resolutions was forwarded to the French cabinet. Catholic officials in America have carried on a vigorous campaign intended to make it appear that the French government was being condemned by the whole American nation. They have even gone so far as to plan a boycott of all articles of French production. This campaign and the practical silence of American Protestantism thus far has seemed to indicate to France just what the Catholics designed it should. It is well that the Baptists have spoken. The apparent success of the American Catholic campaign and the lethargy of American Protestantism in reference thereto can be attributed only to the fact that American Protestantism has lost the inclination to protest, and that the people are swinging far away from the principles that made America a nation and made it great.