Legislation for Churches.
During the past three years, George James Bayles tells us in the Church Economist, of New York, there has been legislation in thirteen States concerning churches, either as new laws or amendments to existing laws. This legislation is largely in the matter of corporations. Michigan passed a law in 1901 that “civil corporations connected with Congregational churches may be consolidated with the church by a two-thirds vote of the members of the church. This last,” he continues, “is a good illustration of the general tendency seen throughout civil church law to do away with the distinction between the church body and the incorporated society.” On the statute books of many States purely ecclesiastical functionaries, such as presiding elders, superintendents, bishops, and archbishops, may be constituted ecclesiastical corporations sole, and thereby exercise the functions of civil corporations by virtue of their ecclesiastical offices. And the article, as given in Public Opinion of May 8, concludes: “All denominations are now coming up to the senate legislatures for enactments that will project into the civil business affairs of the churches the essential features of particular politics, congregational, synodical, or episcopal.” It is a sign of the times showing the ever closer union of Church and State, for which Protestantism and Americanism once stood as protests.