Recognizing God | AdventAI

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Feb 28, 1871

Recognizing God.

THE people of the United States came to their political majority resting—or rather, staggering—under the heavy burden of Human Slavery. For eighty years thereafter they remained under the unjust imputation of cherishing and sustaining that anomaly, when in fact they had not the right nor the power to abolish it. State Sovereignty shielded this, as it has shielded so many crying abuses; and only the madness of the slave-holding caste ultimately gave the Nation the power and the opportunity to establish its political fabric on the solid foundation of Impartial Liberty. At length, and we trust evermore, the political rights of every American citizen are exactly equal to those of every other, and are thus guaranteed and shielded by our Federal Constitution.

Eternal vigilance is the price of Liberty. We have no sooner routed the enemy who defiantly advanced from one direction than we are called to meet another, who more meekly and sinuously approaches from another. The foe who desecrated and chattelized man is succeeded by one who is speciously intent on recognizing and honoring God.

We cheerfully admit that the authors and backers of the new crusade are worthy men and good citizens. We admit that what they propose seems to them not only right but eminently proper and urgently necessary. It is not a novelty that men should have an earnest “zeal for God,” which is not “according to knowledge.” “Ye know not what spirit ye are of,” was an admonition addressed to the immediate followers of the Saviour; what marvel that some followers of those followers should be tempted to deserve a similar rebuke? Persecution and every form of intolerance and bigotry have been the work of men who meant thereby to honor God and bless mankind. In resisting an erroneous and perilous movement, we nowise impugn the motives nor assail the characters of its champions.

The Convention lately held in Philadelphia, to promote an amendment of the Federal Constitution whereby God shall be formally recognized and Christianity declared the true basis of all human government, deliberately

Resolved, That, in view of the controlling power of the Constitution in shaping State as well as National policy it is of immediate importance to public morals and to social order to secure such an amendment as will indicate that this is a Christian nation, and place Christian laws, institutions, and usages, in our Government, on an undeniable, legal basis in the fundamental law of our nation—especially those which secure a proper oath, and which protect society against blasphemy, Sabbath-breaking, and polygamy.

“A proper oath”—that is, an oath proper to be taken by Christians as these men understand Christianity. Can a Hebrew take this oath? or a deist? or an atheist? or a “heathen Chinee?” or even a rationalizing Unitarian? Manifestly not. The very object of imposing such an oath would be defeated if he could. This “proper oath” is intended and will be shaped to exclude not only from office but from voting if challenged, from the jury-box, and from the witness-stand, every one who is regarded by its framers as a Christian. Who does not see that this is Church and State in a far more intolerant union than any European monarchy now endures?

But “blasphemy” is one of the offenses against which the new Amendment is to “protect Society.” Of course, blasphemy must be defined before it can be punished. Our prosecutors and judges must determine that an averment is blasphemous, just as John Calvin and Company did when they tried, condemned, sentenced, and burned to death, Michael Servetus, a scholar and theologian of blameless life and unquestioned honesty, for his stout resistance to the Trinitarian dogmas. If it be indeed the duty of Government to “protect Society” against “blasphemy,” then the roasting to death of Servetus, as of tens of thousands like him, was eminently proper and salutary. The Spanish Inquisition, with its racks, thumb-screws, infinite unbearable tortures and broilings at the stake, was a logical and inevitable deduction from the premise that it is the duty of Government to “protect Society” against “blasphemy.”

“Sabbath-breaking,” too, is among the crimes against which it is proposed to “protect Society” by Federal power. Whose Sabbath is to be thus hallowed and hedged about with Federal punishments? Unquestionably that of the promoters of the Amendment, not that of Jews, Seventh-day Baptists, &c. That God has set apart and sanctified the first day of the week for a Sabbath, is not at this hour the conviction of a majority of the American people; and of course any enactment which would satisfy the promoters of the proposed Amendment would be violated each week by at least five million persons. How shall our already overburdened courts find time to try the culprits? Where shall we find prison-cells in which to immure them?

But we forbear. The proposed recognition of God involves a more fundamental and sweeping change than was effected by our father's separation from Great Britain. It would give us a government not unlike that from which Rome has just been emancipated. We entreat thoughtful, intelligent citizens to refrain from giving the project a countenance, which cannot fail to be productive of grave mischief.—N. Y. Tribune.