OUT FOR STATE-ENFORCED RELIGION by Editor

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Mountain View, California · Feb 21, 1906

OUT FOR STATE-ENFORCED RELIGION.

By Editor

Ohio's new governor comes squarely out for the enforcement of religion by State authority. From his inaugural message, we take this extract:

While the disobeying of any law is demoralizing and degrading to a citizen or community, the disobeying the Sunday laws is doubly so. Hence the so-called Sunday laws should be obeyed and enforced. Not only in the country and in the small villages, but in the large towns and cities as well. The village, county, community, city, state, or people that disobeys the divine law of the sabbath, which makes it a day of rest and worship, fails to realize the teachings and commands of the Almighty.

If America is to maintain her position as the nation peculiarly favored by God, and the one of all others that is to have a great destiny, we must forever maintain our respect and reverence for this holy day. While the Republic endures, let us advocate what the great masses of all the people believe in—our American Sunday and the Christian Sabbath. We should not forget that righteousness exalteth a State or nation, and that lawlessness degrades it.

To be sure, I believe in home rule for all divisions. The citizens of the large cities should continue to be governed as they are now by the same laws that are in force for all the people. Certainly the citizens of any subdivision can not take upon themselves the right to obey or disobey certain general laws unless this right is given them by the people of the State.

This is about the strongest utterance in favor of compulsory religion that has yet come from any state executive, and, taken in connection with the position of the mayors of Cincinnati and some other cities, must give increased encouragement to such bodies as the Evangelical Alliance and other National Reform auxiliaries. The idea of the people’s getting their rights from the State is a complete reversal of both republican and democratic principles. According to the Declaration of Independence—to which the people of this Republic still have a right to adhere—the rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness are God-given, and governments are formed for the protection of these rights, and not for their abridgement.

Furthermore, the State has no right to compel the observance of any religious institution. To do so is an establishment of religion, and in violation of the First Amendment of the Federal Constitution.

Governor Pattison is going contrary to every democratic principle, and more than this, every Christian principle.