CHAPTER TWENTY
Religion
The individualistic conception of life and the religious conceptions of the world favour each other. The more that an individual’s religious temperament sees this earthly life merely as a preparation for the heavenly, the more he puts all his efforts into the development of his individual personality. General concepts, civilizations, and political powers cannot, as such, enter the gates of heaven; and the perfection of the individual soul is the only thing which makes for eternal salvation. On the other hand, the more deeply individualism and the desire for self-perfection have taken hold on a person, so much the deeper is his conviction that the short shrift before death is not the whole meaning of human existence, and that his craving for personal development hints at an existence beyond this world. Through such individualism, it is true, religion is in a sense narrowed; the idea of immortality is unduly emphasized. Yet the whole life of an individualistic nation is necessarily religious. The entire American people are in fact profoundly religious, and have been from the day when the Pilgrim Fathers landed, down to the present moment.
On the other hand, individualism cannot decide whether we ought to look on God with fear or with joy, to conceive Him as revengeful or benevolent, to think human nature sinful or good. The two most independent American thinkers of the eighteenth century, Jonathan Edwards and Benjamin Franklin, represent here the two extremes. The men who have made American history and culture took in early times the point of view of Edwards, but take to-day rather that of Franklin.
Can it be said that America is really religious to-day? From first impressions, a European may judge the opposite; first and most of all, he observes that the government does not concern itself with the church. Article VI of the Constitution expressly forbids the filling of any office or any political position of honour in the United States being made dependent on religion, and the first amendment adds that Congress may never pass a law aiming to establish any official religion or to hinder religious freedom. This provision of the Constitution is closely followed in the Constitutions of the several states. The government has nothing to do with the church; that is, the church lacks the powerful support of the state which it receives in all monarchical countries; and in fact the state interprets this neutrality prescribed by the Constitution so rigorously that, for example, statistics of religious adherence for the last great census were obtained from the church organizations, because the state has not the right to inquire into the religious faith of citizens. Ecclesiastics pass no state examinations to show their fitness to preach; millions of people belong to no church organization; the lower masses are not reached by any church, and the public schools have no religious instruction. It might thus appear as if the whole country were as indifferent to religion as European humourists have declared it to be, in saying that the Almighty Dollar is the American’s only god.
On looking more closely, one finds very soon that the opposite is the case. Although it is true that the state is not concerned with religion, yet this provision of the Constitution in no wise signifies any wish to encourage religious indifference. The states which united to form the Federation were profoundly religious; both Protestants and Catholics had come to the New World to find religious freedom, had made great renunciations to live in their faith untroubled by the persecutions of the Old World, and every sect of Europe had adherents on this side of the ocean. Not a few of the states were, in their general temperament, actually theocratic. Not only in Puritan New England had the church all the power in her hands, but in the colony of Virginia, the seat of the English High-Churchmen, it was originally the law that one who remained twice away from church was flogged, and on the third time punished with death. When America broke away from England, almost every state had its special and pronounced religious complexion. The majority of the population in the separate colonies had generally forced their religion on the whole community, and religious interests were everywhere in the foreground.
Although, finally, Jefferson’s proposition constitutionally to separate church and state was accepted, this move is not to be interpreted as indifference, but rather as a wish to avoid religious conflicts. In view of such pronounced differences as those between Puritans, Quakers, High-Churchmen, Catholics, etc., the establishment of any church as a state institution would have required a subordination of the other sects which would have been felt as suppression. The separation of the church from the state simply meant freedom for every sect. Then, too, not all the separate states followed the federal precedent; the New England States especially favoured, by their taxation laws, the Calvinistic faith until the beginning of the nineteenth century; and Massachusetts was the last to introduce complete religious neutrality, as lately as 1833. In the Southern States, the relations between church and state were more easily severed; and in the Middle States, even during colonial times, there was general religious freedom.
Whether or not the separation was rapid or slow, or whether it took place under the passive submission, or through the active efforts of the clergy, the churches everywhere soon became the warmest supporter of this new condition of things. All the clergy found that in this way the interests of religion were best preserved. The state does nothing to-day for the churches except by way of laws in single states against blasphemy and the disturbance of religious worship, and by the recognition, but not the requirement, of church marriage. There are also remnants of the connection in the recognized duty of the President to appoint the annual day of Thanksgiving, and in cases of signal danger to appoint days of fasting and prayer, and one more remnant in the fact that the legislatures are opened by daily prayer. Otherwise, the state and church move in separate dimensions of space, as it were, and there is no attempt to change this condition.
It was, therefore, no case of an orthodox minority being forced to content itself with an unchurchly state; but neither party nor sect nor state had the slightest wish to see church and state united. The appreciation of this mutual independence is so great that public opinion turns at once against any church which tries to exert a political influence, whether by supporting a certain political body in local elections or by trying to obtain public moneys for its educational institutions and hospitals. When, for instance, the principal anti-Catholic organization, the so-called American Protective Association, became regrettably wide-spread, it got its strength, not from any Protestant ecclesiastical opposition, but only from the political antipathy against that church which seemed the most inclined to introduce such un-American side influences in party politics. Every one felt that a great American principle was there at stake.
Thus the legal status of the churches is that of a large private corporation, and nobody is required to connect himself with any church. Special ecclesiastical legislation is, therefore, superfluous; every church may organize, appoint officers, and regulate its property matters and disciplinary questions as it likes, and any disputed points are settled by civil law, as in the case of all corporations. Just as with business companies, a certain sort of collective responsibility is required; but the competition between churches, as between industrial corporations, is unhampered, and the relation of the individual to his church is that of ordinary contract. One hundred and forty-eight different sects appeal to-day for public favour. To the European this sounds at first like secularization, like a lowering of the church to the level of a stock company—like profanation. And still no Catholic bishop nor Orthodox minister would wish it different. Now how does this come about?
In the first place individualism has even here victoriously carried through its desire for self-determination. Nobody is bound to belong to any congregation, and one who belongs is therefore willing to submit himself to its organization, to subscribe to its by-laws, and to support its expenditures. Nobody pays public taxes for any church, nor is under ecclesiastical authority which he does not freely recognize. The church is, therefore, essentially relieved of any suspicion of interfering with individual freedom. The individual himself is for the same reason not only free to adopt or to reject religion, but also to express his personal views in any form or creed whatsoever. Only where the church exercises no authority on thought or conscience can it be supported by the spirit of self-determination. Thus, the Mennonite Church has already developed twelve sects, the Baptist thirteen, the Methodist seventeen, and all of these are equally countenanced. At the same time the reproach can never be made that the church owes its success to the assistance of the state: what it does is by its own might; and so its success is thoroughly intrinsic and genuine, its zeal is quickened, and its whole activities kept apart from the world of political strife and directed toward ideals.