Religious Liberty Overridden in America
By C. S. Longacre
ONE way to set aside the guaranties of religious liberty in the federal and state constitutions is to repeal the privileges and immunities granted to its citizens. But this mode of procedure is not so easy, and the enemies of religious liberty seldom attempt the overthrow of the constitution in this way. There is an easier but a more effectual way to deprive citizens of the enjoyment of their constitutional right to worship God according to the dictates of their own consciences, or not to worship; and that is by overriding the constitutional guaranties by statutory legislation or by judicial interpretations of law. The danger of losing our most sacred, inalienable, God-given rights is not by statutory repeal, but by the overriding of these privileges pertaining to the minority. The Roman republic held to its republican forms long after it had lost the real spirit of the republic, under the domination of tyrants and despots of the worst type. Even so it is possible for the American republic to depart from its fundamental principles of civil and religious liberty, and in practice deny every theory of our guaranties of constitutional liberty for the individual citizen. It is well to remember that America was not always free, and that once upon a time, men were persecuted and put to death for daring to differ, in their religious teaching and practice, with the tenets and opinions of the established religion. The successors of the old régime are not dead to-day, but have greatly multiplied, and are loudly clamoring for a resumption of the old order of things. WHERE IS OUR BOASTED FREEDOM?
Those who dare to differ with the teaching and practices of the popular religion of the present day are still incarcerated in prisons and chain gangs in some of the states of the Union. Hundreds of Seventh-day Adventists have been fined and imprisoned for worshiping God in harmony with the fourth commandment of the Decalogue. With all our boasted freedom of individual rights and equality of rights in religious matters before the law, some states and some courts require Seventh-day Adventists to observe Sunday after they have already conscientiously observed Saturday as the Sabbath, thus compelling them to observe two days each week. Just now there are two cases pending before the courts of Oklahoma, and five cases before the courts of Tennessee, in which states Seventh-day Adventists are prosecuted for doing private work in their own dwellings or on their premises on Sunday. Scores of other men, not Seventh-day Adventists, had done similar work from time to time on their private premises as actual necessities, but only Adventists were indicted. Notwithstanding the fact that those who observe Saturday as the Sabbath are exempted, by the statutes of Oklahoma, from being compelled to observe Sunday also, yet the district court at Watonga, Oklahoma, denied the defendants the right to offer as defensive material the constitutional guaranties granting religious freedom to all citizens alike, as well as the right to plead the immunities of the exemption statute enacted by the legislature for their special benefit and protection in case of prosecution. The guaranties of religious liberty for the individual so magnificently set forth in both federal and state constitutions, some of our courts mock at, and regard as empty platitudes. These guaranties are set aside by being overridden. Unless juries, lawyers, and judges recognize the purport and spirit of the constitutional guaranties and immunities granted to the individual citizen, we can look, in the not far distant future, for a repetition, in America, of the bloody persecutions of medieval Rome. Such a travesty upon justice and liberty ought to awaken the press of the country, and stir the public conscience to the last degree. The fact that the courts override the constitutional guaranties, and the public quietly acquiesces without protesting, serves as a striking testimony that the American republic is retrograding to the old order of things, and that the United States is fulfilling a prophecy uttered nearly 1,900 years ago. Read Rev. 13:11-18, and you will find a divine statement as to how far the American republic was to depart from its lamblike origin.