Sunday Laws and Religious Liberty.
From the Oakland Tribune. CONSTITUTIONALLY this republic specifically recognizes no religious belief and makes no distinction between different religions; but that the inhabitants of the United States, collectively speaking, are a Christian people is impressed on our laws and institutions in many ways. Our code of justice is modeled in accordance with the ethics of the Christian cult; the methods of administering in it are tinctured with Christian usage and ritual, and the spirit of our entire political system is impregnated with Christian doctrine. The Federal Constitution guarantees to every person the free exercise of religious belief and the rites of worship he desires to observe, yet in actual every-day experience certain sects are favored by law while others labor under disabilities. Every Sunday law is a proof of this fact. Such statutes compel universal recognition of the fact that Sunday is held to be a day of sanctity and worship by nearly all the Christian sects. All arguments advanced to prove that one day in the week should be set aside for rest and recreation can not obscure the fact that the basic idea underlying the whole scheme of restricting secular pursuits on Sunday is religious. Fundamentally, people are required to abstain from labor and business occupations on the theory that the day is sacred and should be devoted to worship. If the desecration idea were eliminated from the public mind, not a Sunday law in the land could claim obedience. Recently the governor of Texas has undertaken to strictly enforce the Sunday law of that state, which has either been a dead letter or only nominally obeyed in certain localities. The impelling motive for his action came from a concerted movement in the churches to put an end to Sabbath desecration. In the agitation among the religious congregations not the slightest attention was paid to the pretense that Sunday had been set aside as a day of rest and recreation. The idea was to compel everybody regardless of belief or inclination to observe Sunday as a holy day. Now the Jews, Adventists, and some minor sects reverence Saturday as a holy day, but have no more respect for Sunday than Monday; while others of no particular belief do not believe in the sanctity of any particular day. It is clear that all such are discriminated against by Sunday laws. The Sabbath of the Jew and the Adventist is not respected by the orthodox Christian, yet Jews and Adventists are compelled by law to pay outward respect to the holy day of Christians. This shows that we are a Christian people, despite the boast that this is a land of perfect religious liberty. It is not. In a thousand ways the fact is emphasized. It is also evident that the laws which emphasize the fact smack of religious intolerance and essentially deny the religious freedom guaranteed by the Constitution.