Hypocrisy Exposed by a Baptist Minister
By L. A. S.
In Allegheny County, Pa., there has been of late much agitation of the question of enforcing Sunday observance, through the provisions of the Pennsylvania State law in which Sunday is recognized as the Christian sabbath. Allegheny County is the center of the movement in this country which seeks to enforce Sunday observance on religious grounds, and the Allegheny County Sabbath Association, an organization of clergymen, is its fountainhead in Allegheny County. The so-called “civil” sabbath law of the State, which has survived as a relic of the times when church and state were united in this country, and is so manifestly a religious law that the secular authorities rarely think of enforcing it unless they are importuned to do so by religious zealots, is enforced upon the people by this ecclesiastical organization, acting in its capacity as a religious body and for purely religious reasons. Policemen and other secular officials enforce the “civil” Sunday law under its directions. The arrangement so clearly amounts to a union of church and state, and is so plainly contrary to the principles of republican government, so evidently theocratic in character, that it finds opponents even among clergymen who regard Sunday as the Sabbath, and desire to see that day generally observed. One such clergyman, the Rev. W. A. Stanton (Baptist), was so impressed with the anti-Christian and anti-American nature of the undertaking, that, at a meeting of the Allegheny Baptist Ministers’ Association, he arose and offered a resolution calling on the latter to divorce itself from any further affiliation with the Allegheny County Sabbath Association in its Sunday observance crusade. In a sermon, the following Sunday, setting forth his reasons for such action, Mr. Stanton said:— The church differs from the state in that it is a voluntary organization for religious purposes only, having a distinct history, creed, ecclesiastical government, and forms of worship. Its natural basis is man’s spiritual and religious nature; its laws, pains, and penalties are for its voluntary members only. It has no moral right to assume the civil functions of the state. Neither has the state any right to assume its functions. Both deal with man, but with different phases of his nature. An infringement by the church upon the rights and functions of the state tends toward a theocracy, where the government is by ecclesiastics, and where the ministers would be in reality the chief officers of state, and would claim for all real or alleged revelations of God the authority of civil law. They would also claim the right to punish for violation of civil as well as of religious statutes. . . . History is so full of the impossibility of making men religious by law as to need no specific citations. And yet the temptation is ever before zealous men to imagine that a good end justifies doubtful means, and that it is worth while, at least this once. They ask, How else may it be done? and because another way is not easily seen, or threatens slower progress, they try the one that seems quickest and easiest, without thinking clear through to possible results that they themselves would be quick to repudiate when actually brought to pass. It is here that I criticize the appeals of the Allegheny County Sabbath Association to churches and ministerial associations, as such, to enforce our civil Sunday laws. . . . From their own circular entitled “Enforcing the Sabbath Law,” I learn that they report to the ministers’ associations, “under whose auspices the movement was inaugurated.” They ask the ministerial associations “to indorse the movement for the enforcement of law, and to pledge financial support to a total amount of one thousand dollars.” They even ask for “authority to proceed with the organization of a county Sabbath association to affiliate with the state association.” That hardly looks like a citizens’ movement, does it? I should call it a movement of ministers, as ministers, in their organized capacity as officers of the church. Furthermore, in the same official document, signed by the officers of the Sabbath association, and all of them ministers, I find that they gave notice to offenders that they “would have to pay the penalty.” What right have church officers to do that? In another place the circular refers to the ministers’ associations as “those to whom we are responsible as a committee.” I see no other conclusion but that the ministers in these associations are enforcing civil law as ministers. Were further proof needed, it may be had on the fourth page of said circular, where “the association, or ministers of each Christian denomination that believe in this law, appoint a committee of five ministers, with power to add to their number five laymen” (not citizens, but “laymen”), “thus making a committee of ten, to act with the committees of other religious bodies co-operating to form an advisory committee to act with the executive committee in all its work, alike of enforcement, education, and legislation.” With the exception of “education,” do we not have here a clear case of the officers and laymen of the church, in an official capacity and not as citizens, self-assuming the functions of the state? Such testimony from an unprejudiced witness ought to be convincing.