PROTESTANTISM and AMERICAN PRINCIPLES
By W. A. Colcord
A Plea for Their Preservation—America the Heir of the Reformation
The aggressions of Rome in the United States are becoming so bold and so conspicuous that voices of protest are beginning to be heard from many quarters, the national capital not excepted. WOULD ELIMINATE THE WORD “PROTESTANT”
Concluding his sermon Sunday, December 28, 1913, on the occasion of his twenty-fifth anniversary as rector of the Church of the Epiphany (Episcopalian), in Washington, D. C., the Rev. Dr. Randolph H. McKim, after referring to the recent effort on the part of some in his own church to eliminate the word “Protestant” from the church name, which he said had happily been defeated, made a very earnest plea for maintaining the Protestant character of the Protestant Episcopal Church, and the Protestant principles upon which the government of the United States was founded. He said: MAINTAIN IT AT ALL HAZARDS
"Let me exhort you, then, my dear brethren, with all the earnestness I can command, to maintain at all hazards the Protestant character of our beloved church. That is its strength. That is its reason for being. Around that cluster its most glorious traditions. It became Protestant at the Reformation in order that it might remain Catholic. Its Protestantism is an essential condition of its primitive and catholic character. Only by fidelity to the principles of the Reformation can we fulfil our mission to the American people." "Remember that the principles which lie at the root of the American Constitution were born of the Reformation. That statement has recently been challenged, but without any substantial ground whatever. Michelet declares that it is to Martin Luther the modern world owes ‘the immense benefits of intellectual enfranchisement.’ ‘Luther,’ he says, ‘was the restorer of liberty.’ And Lord Acton, a man of great ability and learning, himself a Roman Catholic, testifies that we owe to the Reformers the combination of liberty and order which is our most cherished possession to-day. And he adds that ‘religious liberty’ is rightly described as the parent of political liberty.’" "In the American colonies, religious liberty was not at first understood nor conceded. But in time, it came as the twin sister of that political liberty which was so passionately maintained by our forefathers. And when the Revolution came, both religious and civil liberty were grafted upon the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United States." "The first amendment of that immortal instrument declares that ‘Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or of abridging the freedom of speech or of the press.’" EVERY ONE OF THESE RIGHTS DENIED
"But it is remembered that every one of these fundamental rights of man is denied in the Encyclical Immortale Dei, issued November 1, 1885,—equality, personal liberty, liberty of opinion, government of the people, by the people, for the people, religious liberty, liberty of conscience, liberty of worship, liberty of the press. Remember also that Leo XIII distinctly declares all these to be the fruit of the Reformation." THE CHIEF HEIR OF THE REFORMATION
"The historian Bancroft, so often quoted of late, declares that ‘America is the chief heir of the Reformation in its purest form.’ He also tells us that all the thirteen colonies were Protestant. Even in Maryland only one twelfth of the population was other than Protestant. So that America at the time of the Revolution was a most thoroughly Protestant country. In 1784 the entire Roman Catholic population amounted to only 32,000. Only one of the signers of the Declaration of Independence was a Roman Catholic,—the brave and noble Charles Carroll, of Carrollton." "On the other hand, nearly two thirds of the signers of the Declaration of Independence, thirty-four out of fifty-six, were Protestant Episcopalians. The author of the Declaration of Independence was born and nurtured in the Protestant Episcopal Church. The immortal father of his country was a devout member of the same church. The father of the Constitution was a Protestant and an Episcopalian. So was the first chief justice, its great interpreter. So was Patrick Henry. So was Benjamin Franklin. So was Richard Henry Lee." "John Fiske, the Massachusetts historian, has said that there were five great men who made the American nation,—Washington, Jefferson, Marshall, Madison, and Hamilton. But all of them were Protestants and sons of the Episcopal Church." "Let me say then, in conclusion, that no fact in all the range of history is more clearly or undeniably established than that our American Constitution was established by a Protestant people, and under the inspiration of Protestant ideas. And then let me ask if we whose ancestors toiled and suffered and died to create this wonderful fabric of liberty and self-government, should supinely allow our heritage of freedom to be insidiously taken from us by a church which has in all lands and in all ages been the foe of liberty—a church one of whose organs did on November 21, 1912, publish these words:" "‘Our heroes are the Duke of Alva and Catherine de Medici. They knew the Huguenots, and they drove them off the continent. We have never written a line in extenuation or palliation of the Inquisition. We never thought it needed a defense.’—The Rev. Dr. Phelan, in the Western Watchman." "The same writer says: ‘The pope is the ruler of the world. All the emperors, all the kings, all the princes, all the presidents of the world to-day are as these altar boys of mine.’" "Surveying, then, the conditions that prevail in our country, seeing these millions of aliens pouring into our country from Roman Catholic Europe, observing the efforts of that church to organize them for the conquest of America, I feel it a solemn duty on this my twenty-fifth anniversary, to urge you, my brethren, to be prepared to meet this grand assault on our faith. We too must organize. We too must consolidate our strength. Above all, Protestants of every name must sink their differences, and unite their influence, to meet this danger that threatens our beloved country." "‘I know of no way of judging the future,’ exclaimed Patrick Henry, ‘but by the past.’ And all past history makes it clear that the dominance of papal power spells the destruction of free institutions." "The danger is real. It grows greater every year. It may become imminent before many decades. And the only power sufficient to meet it—and, thank God, that is sufficient—is a united Protestantism, standing firmly and bravely in defense of our liberties." It is indeed refreshing to hear so earnest and so eloquent a plea for liberty. It is gratifying also to know that some at least in the ranks of Protestantism are awakening to the fact that there is an enemy in the land, and that a crisis is at hand; that Rome has set to herself the task of taking this country, and of making America, ‘the chief heir of the Reformation in its purest form,’ Catholic. Here in this fair land, it is her purpose to make an ‘image to the beast,’—another union of church and state. Against such a calamity both Catholics and Protestants should be warned; for who, with a spark of liberty in his veins, desires to see the history of the Dark Ages repeated? Well would it be if every pulpit and every platform in the land should ring with such a warning message as that here quoted.