RELIGIOUS FREEDOM
Elder W. N. Tharp (deceased)
[This letter was submitted to The Messenger of Truth (September 1920) by Elder John R. Daily and endorsed by him. It originally had been sent by Elder Tharp to The Indianapolis News, but was turned down by that publication. This letter shows the support of our brethren of the historic Baptist position against the combination of church and state. – Ed.]
Note: This editorial is one hundred years old. Today, powerful forces such as the National Education Association have turned public schools into machines to wage war against the Christian religion. This editorial shows that the sword can cut both ways. Schools have no right to promote or to oppose religion. hlh.
I am in receipt of your circular in support of Mr. Edward C. Toner, of Anderson, as a Candidate for Governor. I want to thank you for sending me this literature, because of a certain statement made in it. You say, “Incidentally through his newspaper, he has in recent years been a vigorous advocate of the movement to place the Bible in the common schools.”
Against this I wish to enter my solemn and vigorous protest, and I think, when I am doing so, I am speaking the sentiment of the denomination (Primitive Baptist) with whom I am identified. My reasons for this are numerous, but I will call your attention only to the principle ones.
The first and most important is, it is the first step in a return to the “dark ages” wherein men and women were slaughtered for not bowing to legal religion. This first step may look very innocent, but it is like the blind man leaving the path and going toward a precipice. The first step is an indication of the danger. The literally blind will heed the first voice of warning, but those who are blinded by a false religious zeal know not that they are blind, and will shout back in defiance to those who would warn them. Paul says of such, “I bear them record that they have a zeal of God, but not according to knowledge. For they being ignorant of God’s righteousness, and going about to establish their own righteousness, have not submitted themselves unto the righteousness of God.”
I have had some opportunity to observe some of the working of this zeal without knowledge. I made a tour lately of some of our churches in North Carolina, Georgia and Alabama, and the last named state has legislated the Bible into the common schools, and the County School Boards have gone several steps further in their blind zeal. The teacher must be a church member. This is easily complied with by the basest hypocrite or the unscrupulous infidel, while others who are not church members, but far better teachers and moral examples, prefer to seek other employment rather than play the part of a hypocrite. In one instance, a young man of excellent scholarship, years of experience, and of unquestionable character, applied for a school, when the following dialogue took place:
School Board. To what church do you belong?
Teacher. No church.
School Board. You must be a member of some church before we can contract with you.
Teacher. Which church must I join?
School Board. Most any one, Baptist Methodist, Presbyterian – not particular.
Teacher. How will the Primitive Baptist Church do?
School Board. Oh! not at all; they are not good.
Teacher. Then I will not teach at your school. I will dig stumps rather than violate my conscience in such a way.
He was turned down, notwithstanding there was a scarcity of teachers. It set up a bar against everyone who is opposed to being dictated to in his religious principles.
Another step is: they have adopted a Reading Circle book for the school which has for its object the union of church and school. It says, “The church and school are inseparable.” The next question to be settled is: “Which church?” It may take much bloodshed to settle this question, and after it is settled, it will take more blood to enforce obedience. It was so in the past, and will be so in the future, when we have a church established by law. We are not so far from the precipice as some may think. I fear that some men are walking in their sleep and will not wake up until it is too late.
The next step taken by the Alabama School Board is, in some instances, to require a satisfactory grade in Sunday School lessons before passing. Our people seriously object to this because we no more believe some of the things taught in those lessons than those who write them believe some of the things taught in the Bible.
On a certain Friday afternoon a teacher was informed that his school was wanted at its close to hear a religious lecture at the hall. A child of Primitive Baptists told the teacher that he could not go as he was wanted at home. The teacher told him he must go or remain a prisoner for one hour in the school house. This parent and teacher met the next day and the teacher was told with some emphasis that such a thing must not occur again. Is this parent to be forced into submission? If so, the battle is on, and mere fines and imprisonment will not force submission in this case and thousands of others, if the order remains in force. Are our children to be taken from us by force (compulsory attendance at school) and we compelled to pay for a religious training that we conceive to be contradictory to the Bible?
This government was founded by the better element of Europe who fled from religious persecutions, and they secured to us a government in which each citizen is at liberty to worship according to the dictates of his own conscience, or not worship at all, just as he pleases, with no one to molest or hinder. Shall we so soon return to barbarism? These would-be religious guides will say, “We will never do that. We will not kill as did our fathers.”
So said the Jews, but they killed the lowly Nazarene. Will they now make laws and not enforce them? If fines and imprisonments will not force submission will they not kill? The philosopher, scientist or scholar knows no more of God by reason of his research than does the wild man of the forest. Proof – each has his own peculiar ideas of God, each differing from the others, and among the most eminent of them are atheists, infidels and skeptics. Then why should their pupils and inferiors presume to teach us what we should believe, and how we should worship?
I will serve them notice that the conscientious Christian will be subject to their power, but not to their orders, even if disobedience results in the restoration of the Roman Inquisition. Therefore give us a candidate with clean hands. From the Primitive Baptist, submitted by Elder Mark Green.