Evils of Religious Legislation
By H. W. Reed
MANY and varied are the means and ways resorted to by the federated churches that religious legislation may become established in this nation. Little do such seem to realize that our national existence is based upon the heaven-born principle of the equality of human rights as the only just foundation upon which to build political governments. The State of Wisconsin has a strong Federation of Churches and Christian Workers, and from the seventh annual report of Secretary H. A. Miner, rendered at the Sparta convention last October, I will quote as follows: “It has furnished a strong backing to the Anti-Saloon League and the Sunday Rest-Day Association, constituent members of this body, in their legislative work to secure laws restricting the liquor traffic and giving better protection to the Sabbath as a day of rest.” In the closing part of his report the secretary said: “Brethren, our State federation, now entering upon the eighth year of its history, the oldest of State federations, while it has not accomplished all we had fondly hoped it might, yet as leading all other States in point of time and in the breadth and character of its work, and receiving, as it does, the approbation of the leading and most intelligent membership of at least ten denominational and six reformatory State bodies, deserves our continued and enthusiastic support.” Thus a people are fulfilling prophecy on the wrong side, and soon the evil results of religious legislation will be experienced. Those who have started out to enforce religion by legislation will never stop short of obtaining a Sunday law with a death penalty attached thereto. This is the terminus of the way in which they have started. Religious legislation is not a plant that springs forth from the virgin soil of freedom, as the United States when established by our forefathers; but an enemy to liberty sowed that evil seed, and it is fast growing up and choking out the good plant of liberty, until to-day it is sickly and nearly ready to die. For any one to drink in the principle of religious legislation as the federated churches are now doing, is but to drink from the stagnant pool from which the Roman Church drank before she drank the blood of martyrs. Now beware, federated churches, how you hover over and around this polluted pool, breathing its poisonous miasma, and drinking its deadly, malarious water. In the light of the past, it is surprising that ministers of the gospel can work for and vindicate religious legislation, which is the masterpiece of evil in a nation depraved and forsaken of God. They are prophetically spoken of, and this awful work they will do. They will just as surely do it as the Jewish church crucified the Saviour, and they will bring irretrievable loss and ruin upon great numbers. May God help us to do all in our power to prevent religious legislation.