p. 3 | Religion and the State

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Sep 27, 1906

Religion and the State

A CHICAGO clergyman in a recent address on “The Church and Civil Authority,” as reported in the Record-Herald of that city, voiced the confusion of thought which prevails in many minds concerning the proper relation between the church and the state. We quote a paragraph relating to education:—

The education of the people is a matter of vital importance to the state, especially as the participation of the common people in the affairs of government is increasing throughout the world. In our land the public school system is entirely free from any participation on the part of the church, and yet it is becoming more and more apparent every day that something more than a mere secular education is needed for the making of good citizens. Moral principles enforced through religion should be taught to our children in some way to impress upon their minds a deep sense of responsibility for their moral actions. The church may maintain its own private schools, but not to the detriment of the state. Men can not be permitted under the cloak of religion to teach or practise theories or doctrines that are contrary to the generally received principles of good government.

According to the view here advocated “moral principles enforced by religion should be taught” as a necessary part of the process of making “good citizens.” But this is to prostitute religion to merely temporal ends. It makes the welfare of the state the supreme thing, rather than the eternal interests of the individual. This is the pagan idea which found its most complete expression in the days of Greece and Rome. Christianity as taught by Jesus Christ met and conquered this heathen notion about religion, and established the principle that those who seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness are, in the proper sense of the term, the best citizens of the state. Furthermore, if the doctrine that “men can not be permitted under the cloak of religion to teach or practise theories or doctrines that are contrary to the generally received principles of good government” had been accepted by the early Christians, the gospel of Christ could not have been preached in the Roman empire. The state can properly impose penalties for uncivil conduct, but not for holding or propagating doctrines of any kind. Any departure from this principle is a step toward despotism.

This Chicago clergyman also dealt with the question of Sunday laws. He said:—

The Sunday question presents the keenest subject between church and state in this country because it is both a civil and a religious question. Man requires one day of rest out of seven. But what really constitutes a healthy day of rest is the vital question. . . . There must be a regulation of the leisure as well as the work of the people. Holidays must not be allowed to become evil days. The day should be jealously guarded by the state as a means for promoting that moral and religious character on the part of the people on which the safety of our republican institutions depends.

If it could once be settled that the state has nothing whatever to do with any matter as “a religious question,” the difficulty about “the Sunday question” would immediately disappear. If Sunday is to be jealously guarded as a means of promoting moral and religious character, then it will soon be found necessary to compel attendance at public

worship, and the next logical step would be to enforce all such religious observances as were approved by the state. This would speedily bring us back to those palmy days when the state regulated religious beliefs, and inflicted the death penalty upon those who advocated views “contrary to the generally received principles of good government.”

If the theories now being taught by the National Reformers and their allies are ever adopted in the administration of this government, the republic of the United States will become the complete counterpart of the republic of Rome, and will meet with the same fate. This whole problem should be studied in the light of prophecy.