Infidel Demands | AdventAI

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Jun 11, 1872

Infidel Demands.

Those who suppose that Infidelity is a negative system, and ready to fold its hands and live at peace if it can only persuade Christians to cease their efforts to bring the world under the influence of God's law, possibly may have their eyes opened by the following from the Index, a paper conducted with no mean ability in the interests of Infidelity, and published in Toledo, Ohio:

“We assume no defensive attitude. We are for carrying the war into Africa. We should spurn the proposal to leave things as they are, on condition that this Christian Amendment agitation should cease. No! We have demands to make.

“The agitation they depend on as a means of preserving the “Christian observances” which still deface the practical administration of this non-Christian government, will ultimately lead to their total abolition. Let them agitate. The struggle between Christianity and secular freedom for the control of this country is inevitable, and will only be hastened by agitation. While these revolutionists are urging their demands, the liberals will more vigorously urge their own. What are they?

“1. We demand that churches and other ecclesiastical property shall no longer be exempted from just taxation.

“2. We demand that the employment of chaplains in Congress, in State Legislatures, in the army, navy, and militia, and in prisons, asylums, and all other institutions supported by public money, shall be discontinued.

“3. We demand that all public appropriations for sectarian, educational, and charitable institutions shall cease.

“4. We demand that all religious services now sustained by the government shall be abolished; and especially that the use of the Bible in the public schools, whether ostensibly as a text-book or avowedly as a book of religious worship, shall be prohibited.

“5. We demand that the appointment, by the President of the United States, or by the governors of the various States, of all religious festivals and fasts shall wholly cease.

“6. We demand that the judicial oath in the courts and in all other departments of the government shall be abolished, and that simple affirmation, under the pains and penalties of perjury, shall be established in its stead.

“7. We demand that all the laws directly or indirectly enforcing the observance of Sunday as the Sabbath shall be repealed.

“8. We demand that all laws looking to the enforcement of “Christian morality” shall be abrogated, and that all laws shall be conformed to the requirements of natural morality, equal rights, and impartial liberty.

“9. In short, we demand that not only in the Constitutions of the United States and of the several States, but also in the practical administration of the same, no privilege or advantage shall be conceded to Christianity, or any other special religion; that our entire political system shall be founded and administered on a purely secular basis; and that whatever changes shall prove necessary to this end, shall be consistently, unflinchingly, and promptly, made.”

Will they succeed in their efforts? We hope not; and yet such is the apathy of the great body of Christian people on this subject, that we are not without our fears. Not only is there apathy among those who ought to be foremost in standing up for the authority of God's law, but there is opposition to doing so on the ground that it provokes opposition. Such persons do not believe in the Saviour's principle: “I came not to send peace on earth, but a sword;” i. e., My principles are positive, and will excite opposition, but they must be proclaimed. The result of all this is that Infidelity is making wonderful progress in molding the character of our people and changing our customs.

As an example, we have in many cities, our own city of Cincinnati included, public libraries, and reading rooms, open on the Sabbath, and the next annual exhibition of the National Academy of Design in New York City is to be open to visitors on Sabbath, at the reduced rate of fifty cents. And if fine pictures are to be exhibited on Sabbath for the gratification of the lovers of art, on the same principle we will have the theaters open to gratify the lovers of the drama. And as another example of progress in that line, we may add that there is now a bill before the Legislature of Ohio, remodeling the system of our common schools, in which the question of reading the Bible is purposely excluded. During its consideration an amendment to the effect that teachers might read the Bible if they chose at the opening of the schools was voted down. The effect of this is to leave the matter entirely in the hands of the local Boards of Education, and our experience is, that the friends of the Bible not being on the alert, as are its enemies, the Bible will, with the adoption of this bill, cease to be read as a book of devotion in all our schools.—Christian Press.