CHURCH AND STATE UNION.
By W. N. Glenn
It has been, and is yet, quite generally assumed that the people of the United States never would accept the doctrine of church and state union. However, in the face of this popular assumption, more than forty years ago the men who led out in the Seventh-day Adventist movement contended that Rev. 13:11-17 was prophetic of a church and state government in the United States; and when the National Reform movement first assumed definite shape, our periodicals and other publications pointed to it as the precursor of the fulfillment of that prophecy. True, the National Reform leaders, while stoutly advocating the principles of church and state government, have all along persistently denied that they designed any such result. When the American Sabbath Union came into existence, as an advocate of certain special features of the National Reform scheme, its leaders denied any thought of church and state union, altho it was plainly pointed out that the success of the Sabbath Union’s pet measures would logically lay the foundation of a church and state government. To show that the religious people of this country are more ready than is generally supposed to indorse such a principle of government, we have only to refer to the work of three men who have visited the state of California within the past seven years. First there came Rev. W. F. Crafts, as representative of the Sabbath Union, having for his special object the securing of a state Sunday law. He scouted the idea of the movement having anything of the church and state principle in it, for it was only a “civil sabbath” that was contemplated. Mr. Crafts did not receive the encouragement from the churches that he expected, and his reception by the ministry was quite limited and decidedly formal. Next came Dr. Edward Thomson, with the sanguine expectation that a three years’ campaign would secure a civil Sunday law. He, too, disclaimed any idea of church and state union, and the coöperation of the ministry in his work was not by any means8 (152)enthusiastic. Altho he set on foot the partially successful scheme of plastering the state with municipal and county Sunday-closing ordinances, his scheme for a state law failed, and considerable of his municipal work raveled out. Yet it is true that he watered the seed sowed by Mr. Crafts, and reiterated the sophistries of that notable predecessor, until quite an impression was made upon the minds of a certain class of people. Next came Professor Herron, by special invitation of the Congregational ministers of San Francisco and the towns contiguous to the bay. Unlike Mr. Crafts and Dr. Thomson, Professor Herron came out squarely for church and state, and, unlike them, he was enthusiastically received by the ministry, of course with a few exceptions. The president of the Pacific Theological Seminary rated him as a seer of so great value that it would be profitable to sacrifice half the people rather than to lose him. He did not remain long on the coast, but his church and state ideas, to be inculcated through the “Christian citizenship” movement, received marked indorsement by the churches wherever he went. His doctrine, boldly stated, made a far deeper impression than did the covert attempts of Mr. Crafts and Dr. Thomson to inculcate the same theories under the guises of physical necessity, police regulation, civil Sunday legislation, etc. The fact that the mass of the popular church membership in California would not be averse to a union of church and state, were it deemed a political possibility, is pretty well indicated by the reception given to the three individuals to which we have alluded. And if this sentiment be so conspicuous in California, what may be surmised in regard to other states? Another straw showing which way the wind is blowing is found in a recent number of the Christian Statesman, organ of the National Reform Association. That journal has always disclaimed any advocacy of a church and state government, but now it publishes with approval an address, delivered before the National Christian Congress at Atlanta, Ga., in December last. In said address are enumerated “some of the blessings of legislation . . . in the ancient Roman Empire under Constantine in the fourth century.” Among these “blessings” is this significant sentence: “Christians were given high offices in the state—as they should have to-day.” Again it is maintained that this “Christian legislation in the Roman Empire is the most blessed and enduring heritage which has come down to modern civil government from this dark period of the past.” In order to evade the appearance of church and state advocacy a feeble apology is inserted, which on the face of it is the blandest subterfuge. Here it is: “We know that Constantine afterwards went too far, and sowed the seeds which ripened into that accursed harvest, ‘the union of church and state,’ but this was not a necessary evil.” Such assertions will not blind any reader of history. So far from Constantine’s sowing the seeds of church and state when he adopted Christianity, that principle had always been the character of the Roman Government. He merely changed his religious profession, and nominally assumed the support of the Christian religion instead of that of paganism, and the change, as his subsequent actions abundantly show, was merely a political move. The “seeds” had been sown in the Christian Church long before, and had grown until the apostatized body was ready to enter into the unholy alliance with the state. Of the church even in apostolic days Paul said, “The mystery of iniquity doth already work.” The idea of professed Christians that they, by virtue of that profession, should be “given high offices in the state” was born of church and state union, in its very incipiency, and it “ripened into that accursed harvest,” church control of the state, or the Papacy, followed by centuries of the most cruel and intolerant policy of which history gives any account. And this is the idea openly advanced by the National Reformers to-day. That the sentiment is growing in the popular churches is seen in the fact that thirty years ago the movement was hardly recognized outside of the single denomination in which it originated, while at its annual meeting a few months ago nearly all the professed Protestant denominations were represented. The opinion which has so long prevailed, that the people of the United States never will tolerate the principle of church and state government, may as well be abandoned. The thing against which our institutions have been supposed to be proof, is already among us—if not in name, at least in the sentiment of an element whose influence is fast gaining the ascendency, and to a degree in legislation, municipal, state, and national.