Church and State | AdventAI

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Apr 4, 1871

Church and State.

HAVING survived the perils of internal war, and promising to pass safely through the trials and agitations resultant from it, our country is endangered by the constant menace of a class of restless agitators, a portion of whom are sincere in their desire to accomplish good results, and the remainder hypocritical and wholly selfish, while all are fanatical. The leaders of this class sometimes appear in one guise, and then in another—sometimes under the political, and then under the religious, banner, but always under the flag of fanaticism. Their grasp is upon the pillars of the temple, and should it fall, theirs will have been the responsibility. Whatever form their irrepressibility may take, its object is always inimical to the spirit of our free institutions. The most noteworthy movement of this class that has recently been made, is the attempt to secure an amendment to the Constitution of the United States that would require all who acknowledged its supremacy to believe in the Christian religion. Aside from most unjustly expatriating our large and respectable number of Jewish citizens, there would be little objectionable in this, save the principle of its incorporation into the fundamental law of the land. However slight, it is the entering wedge of church and State. If we may cut off ever so few persons from the right of citizenship on account of difference of religious belief, then with equal justice and propriety may a majority at any time dictate the adoption of still further articles of belief, until our Constitution is but the text-book of a sect beneath whose tyrannical sway all liberty of religious opinion will be crushed. “Honor the Lord,” is the rallying cry of these crusaders. That has been the cry of all perpetrators of acts of cruelty, injustice, and oppression, from time immemorial. It was the cry of the Spanish Inquisitors, and the English and German torturers of reformers. It brought Cranmer to the stake, incited the massacre of St. Bartholomew’s eve, and caused witches to be burned by the Puritans. The people of enlightened America, we believe, have learned to know that a nation stands most honored in the sight of Heaven, when all of its children are left free to exercise the full right of conscience, and to worship God as they shall see fit, silently in their own hearts, or with impressive form.—Champlain Journal.