p. 21 | Religion and the Constitution

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Aug 2, 1906

Religion and the Constitution

KEEPING the Sabbath day is one of the free exercises of religion. Thus the United States Constitution does not prohibit the Christian’s keeping Sunday as the Sabbath, nor does it forbid the Jew’s keeping Saturday as such; nor does it stop the Greek’s observing Monday as a day of rest, nor does it interfere with the Mohammedan’s keeping Friday as his holy day. Thus, under the Constitution, any person has a right to pursue his business on any day; practically, there is no legal sabbath day for all the United States, according to this Constitution, because the Constitution wisely declined to make any religious laws interfering with any one; and thus the United States, according to its Constitution, is without any religion, and without any religious laws, for the Constitution is . . . non-sectarian.

Undoubtedly the laws enforcing the observance of Sunday are all interferences with personal religious freedom of others who do not agree with these laws. The clause in the Massachusetts Sunday laws freeing a seventh-day person from the Sunday-law obligation is a piece of hypocritical interference, as the clause has no business, nor has the whole Sunday law any business, to be in the statutes of any commonwealth of the United States.

Under this situation there can be no amendment to allow any religious laws to be in force in any State, so all that can be done is to leave the observations of all religious matters to the conscience of the people of the United States, which was . . . the intention of the framers of the Constitution.—Boston Globe, April 10.