President Taft on Religious Liberty
By Editor
PRESIDENT TAFT was the chief guest at the celebration of the 250th anniversary of Norwich, Conn., July 5. Among other things he touched upon was religious liberty. The Associated Press report says that he pleaded that “every man should be allowed to worship God in his own way.” He truly declared that “the American forefathers came to this country ostensibly to escape religious intolerance, but as a matter of fact in order that they might follow out their own religious ideas in their own way and with a marked degree of intolerance toward any other belief.” He continued: “We have passed beyond that now and are coming more and more to realize the right of the individual to worship God as he may choose.” We wish that the President were right. As a matter of fact we are coming more and more in religious circles, as manifest through the American Federation of Churches and other forms of union and confederation, to ignore the right of the individual and to subject individual conscience to the combination. The attempt to carry this out is also manifest in the increasing demand for religious legislation. The great eternal fact ought to be kept before the American people that there is not a single sect or combination of sects or churches or denominations or religious bodies of any sort whatsoever on the face of the earth that is good enough to legislate for a single soul. Conscience toward God is above all human tribunals. Of course the sensible reader will understand that this does not have to do with matters where fanaticism may lead to the infraction of the equal rights of others. We refer to the field of conscience which pertains to a man's duty to his God.