The Rise and Fall of Religious Liberty in America
By C. M. S.
The Campaign of Retrogression
The doctrine of religious liberty—germinant in the Declaration of Independence and plainly outspoken in the national Constitution and State constitutions—was never agreeable to a portion of the people. Madison plainly declares that the struggle for the recognition of that principle at the birth of our nation was one of the greatest struggles in which he was ever engaged. It was not to be expected that the opponents of that principle would sink back confounded and overwhelmed, admit the finality of their defeat, and join with the victorious party to make a success of a work they had done their best to overthrow, and to promulgate a principle they had condemned and trampled upon. Neither did they. Men reckoned among the ablest religious leaders of the times stood uncompromisingly opposed to the principle of soul freedom and the separation of religion and the state. The nation hewed from the woods of the New World must, to meet their desires, bear the sword not only against foreign foes, but against “heretical opinions,” and against all religions save the religion of the party in power. And not only this, but the government must tax the general public to promulgate the favored faith. Since the days of Jonathan Edwards this un-American idea has not lacked able exponents, the most insistent of whom have been members of the Reformed Presbyterian Church. These have been so outspoken in their denunciation of our country’s attitude toward the freedom of men in matters of religion, that, to be consistent with themselves, they have felt it to be a moral duty to refrain from voting, and urge upon their followers so to do, until such time as this nation should recognize Jesus Christ as its king. A minister of that denomination, who is a leader in the organization that is devoting its best energies to “reforming” the nation in this particular, told the writer that he could not conscientiously cast a vote in this country so long as the Constitution continues to read as it does. Thus the attitude of those men who opposed Madison, Washington, and Jefferson when the nation was being founded, is perpetuated in our day in the attitude of that organization and its leaders. In the year 1864 the opposition to our nation’s position in this matter took organized form. In that year the National Reform Association came into being, and began a systematic agitation for the accomplishment of its purposes. Those purposes are set forth in the following excerpts from the preamble to that organization’s constitution, and in Article II of the same document, which read:— Believing that a written Constitution ought to contain explicit evidence of the Christian character and purpose of the nation which frames it, and perceiving that the silence of the Constitution of the United States in this respect is used as an argument against all that is Christian in the usage and administration of our government,— We, citizens of the United States, do associate ourselves under the following articles, and pledge ourselves to God and to one another, to labor, through wise and lawful means, for the ends herein set forth. . . . ARTICLE II. The objects of this society shall be to maintain existing Christian features in the American government; to promote needed reforms in the action of the government touching the Sabbath, the institution of the family, the religious element in education, the oath, and public morality, as affected by the liquor traffic and other kindred evils; and to secure such an amendment to the Constitution of the United States as will declare the nation’s allegiance to Jesus Christ, and its acceptance of the moral laws of the Christian religion, and to indicate that this is a Christian nation, and place all the Christian laws, institutions, and usages of our government on an undeniably legal basis in the fundamental law of the land. This meant, in case of its adoption by the nation, a complete revocation of the principles upon which the nation was founded. It was a blow at the very foundation pillars of the national structure. In short, it was a declaration of war, not against the people, but against the government itself, not for the acquisition of its territory, but for the complete obliteration of its identity, the transformation of its character, the annihilation of its principles and purposes. Where had stood the principle of the separation of church and state, they would put the principle of a union of religion and the state, or church and state, which is its equivalent. Where the nation had refused to require a religious test as a qualification for any office or public trust, they would place5the religious test as the chief test. Where the nation refuses to permit the taxation of the general public for the promulgation of any religion, they would place the opposing principle requiring the teaching of religion at state expense. Where the nation establishes the equality of all its citizens without respect to their religion, they would establish the superiority of the religious citizen above the non-religious citizen, by requiring the non-religious citizen to yield a certain amount of homage to religious practises in which he has no faith. Where the nation has refused to make any laws enforcing any religious ordinances, they would require the enactment of laws penalizing honest labor on a day which this transformed nation should select as a sabbath, thus making liberty in the matter of religious belief and practise a thing of the past, outlawing conscience, making of religion a legal formalism, and instituting again the religious tyranny of the Dark Ages. In view of what the Reformation did in bringing men in the darkness and misery of soul bondage into the light, and in view of the further step and the fuller accomplishment in this country in freeing the conscience from the penalties of law, the success of that disintegrating propaganda is nothing short of a marvel. That men should consider for a moment the proposition to exchange soul freedom for the tyrannical heritage of an age of persecution and soul thralldom must cause even the prince of darkness to wonder. But so reads the prophecy, and the prophecy is fast fulfilling.