“BY NO MEANS ESSENTIAL,” BUT.
By Editor
We have always maintained that State Christianity never can be anything but profession, and that any attempt to enforce Christian doctrine or principle by the State can only result in compulsory profession, or hypocrisy. And we are frequently confronted with evidence that those who advocate State religion are satisfied with a mere profession on the part of the government. They seem to think this the acme of civil government. A case in point is the controversy over a word in the Virginia Bill of Rights. The sentence in which it occurs is as follows:— That religion, or the duty which we owe to our Creator, and the manner of discharging it, can be directed only by reason and conviction, not by force or violence; and therefore all men are equally entitled to the free exercise of religion according to the dictates of conscience; and that it is the mutual duty of all to practise Christian forbearance, love, and charity toward each other. Certain Jewish rabbis entered a protest against the use of the word “Christian,” and thereby called out the following comment by the organ of the National Reformers:— The word is by no means essential to the sense of the clause in which it stands, and but for this mistaken protest, no significance would have been attached to the action of the convention if they had submitted a new Bill of Rights in which the word did not appear. But the opponents of Christianity have now made it difficult, if not impossible, for the Commonwealth of Virginia to comply with this demand without seeming to renounce her character as a Christian commonwealth. Here is a frank admission that the word does not mean anything but a mere profession; that it is not “essential” for anything else. But judging by past precedent, there is reason to believe that this profession, while only a profession, will be made a pretext for demanding laws that will mean compulsory observance of so-called Christian institutions. In 1892 the Supreme Court of the United States, in course of a decision on a certain case, expressed the opinion that “this is a Christian nation.” Instantly the National Reformers seized upon the words “Christian nation,” and heralded them forth as an indorsement of all their demands for religious legislation. At the next session of Congress these words were made the basis of a demand for Sunday legislation; and the demand was honored to the extent of a resolution providing for the closing of the Columbian Exposition at Chicago on Sunday. Nor have the advocates of national religion yet given up the slogan, “This is a Christian nation,” as an inciter of sentiment in that direction. The word “Christian” in the Virginia Bill of Rights does not mean anything but a profession of “Christian character” on the part of the commonwealth; yet history reminds us that this very profession by civil government has in it the possibility of the worst kind of religious persecution. In view of the oft-expressed purposes of the National Reform element, and their growing influence in religious and political circles, there is not the shadow of a doubt that this word “Christian” in civil statutes and court decisions will yet be made the basis of some very unChristian proceedings.