Religious Liberty in Australia

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Jan 22, 1914

Religious Liberty in Australia

ThE Victoria parliament (Australia) is struggling with the problem of compulsory religious instruction in the public schools. Australia has its National Reformers, in fact if not in name, and they are insisting that the state shall teach religion to the school children. These people had been demanding the referendum on this matter, but the parliament, by a majority of seven votes, refused to submit this question to the people in the form of a referendum. The minister of public instruction, Sir Alexander Peacock, in an able speech against the referendum, said, among other things:—

There can be no coercion in religious matters. Absolute religious freedom must prevail. . . . It is the primary duty of the churches of the various denominations to teach the children of their adherents the tenets of their own faith. The state now offers proper facilities for doing so. And it is the duty of the parents to supplement the work of the churches and their Sunday schools by familiarizing the children with the faith in which they are born. The nondescript teaching of Scripture proposed can never take the place of the church and parents. You cannot compromise on matters of religion.

Let me now briefly define what I consider to be the duty of a state in which public opinion is so strongly divided on a question of this kind.

The state must be just to all, and to be just to all it must be neutral. If the

government is to be really free and just to all, the state can have no religion, and recognize no conscience in religious matters. It must be purely secular, recognizing no religion, no sects. It must not even be tolerant. It must be absolutely neutral. The state is the people, and as the people have many beliefs, widely and vitally divergent, it must be creedless. Its duty begins and ends in the administration of civil affairs. . . . Religion of any kind is not a function with which the state can interfere. When it acts, it can only act for the whole. Religious liberty is paramount over all things. The consciences of the people are above human laws; and religious beliefs, being matters of conscience, are not to be assailed. If a majority of the people attempt to force its belief on the schools, the root of religious liberty is struck at.

While these are true Protestant principles, and ought to be upheld by Protestants everywhere, the peculiar feature of the incident is that the organ of the Roman Catholic Church is found to be in harmony with them, while professed Protestants, members of the Scripture Instruction Campaign Council, are clamoring for the referendum in this matter, that, as the Australasian Signs of the Times remarks, they “may settle a religious controversy by majority vote.” They are now proposing to elect legislators who will give them what they desire in this matter. The glamour of civil power blinds the eyes of many professed Christians to the inconsistency and unchristlikeness of such demands and such a course.