NOT A LOCAL ISSUE

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Mountain View, California · May 10, 1905

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 31, No. 19.

NOT A LOCAL ISSUE.

THE controversy in Washington, D. C., over the proposition to introduce religious teaching in the public schools is not a merely local issue; it is a national question, and a vital one at that. Therefore no journal in the country need apologize for discussing it in all its phases. Washington is the capital of the nation, and Congress (composed of representatives of the people of the whole country) legislates for the entire District of Columbia. Whatever legislation the government consummates for the district, whatever municipal regulation it tolerates, involving a general principle, or in violation of any fundamental principle of the government, stands as a precedent that the states may logically follow. Therefore when it is proposed to inaugurate the teaching of a system of official religion in the public schools of Washington, it is a matter that concerns every citizen of the country.

This religious-education scheme has been knocking at the door for a long time. As far back as 1888 a bold, far-reaching attempt was made to foist it upon the country at large by a Constitutional amendment. This was so vigorously attacked by men of various classes who saw the outcome from the standpoint of both civil and religious liberty, that it failed. Since then the advocates of national religion have been more wily, and this attempt to inaugurate the system in Washington was evidently thought to be so limited, and the plea so plausible, that it would brook but little, if any, material opposition.

Whether the full meaning of the local project was understood by the man who launched the scheme with such confident expectation of success, we can not say; perhaps it was not. We are somewhat inclined to the belief that it was not. But there are those connected with the advocacy of the measure who are wont to approach extensive designs through apparently innocent and restricted suggestions; and there is good reason to believe that this effort to introduce the teaching of official religion in the public schools of the capital was deliberately designed as an entering wedge, a precedent, to a far more extensive scheme of national religion. In fact, the proposed religious amendment of 1888 was but a part of the National Reform Association’s scheme for a practical union of church and state.

There is but one effectual way to guard against the major designs of the arch enemy of civil and religious liberty, and that is to note, and warn the people against, the little projects that are set to lead up to the greater purpose.