• U.S.

Religion: Question of Conscience

4 minute read
TIME

What shall a pious citizen believe? Shall he obey his God or his State when both claim allegiance? To most plain men an academic matter, this question has become increasingly engrossing to certain thoughtful U. S. religionists. Last week a large section of them, and their journals, were marshalled stoutly behind the assertion that:

“… the essence of religion is belief in a relation to God involving duties superior to those arising from any human relation. . . . One cannot speak of religious liberty, with proper appreciation of its essential and historic significance, without assuming the existence of a belief in supreme allegiance to the will of God.”

These are words of four eminent jurists: Chief Justice of the U. S. Charles Evans Hughes. Associate Justice Louis Dembitz Brandeis, Harlan Fiske Stone and Oliver Wendell Holmes (who resigned from the Supreme Court last week—see p. 12). But it was a dissenting opinion. The three “Liberal” justices and the pious Chief Justice who wrote the opinion, were a minority in what has since become a cause celebre. The Supreme Court, by 5-4 decision, denied U. S. citizenship to two Canadians, Rev. Douglas Clyde Macintosh, professor of theology in Yale Divinity School, Wartime chaplain, and Marie Averill Bland, Wartime nurse. Professor Macintosh announced that before bearing arms for the U. S., he should prefer to mull over moral causes. Miss Bland would not promise to bear arms at all. The majority of the Court solemnly pronounced: “. . . We are a Christian people. . . . But we are also a nation with the duty to survive . . . whose government must go forward upon the assumption . . . that unqualified allegiance to the nation and submission and obedience to the laws of the land, as well those made for war as those made for peace, are not inconsistent with the will of God.”

Aliens Bland & Macintosh went about their work but their names, paired as tightly as Sacco & Vanzetti, Mooney & Billings, became Symbols. Last October, under the leadership of vigorous Professor Reinhold Niebuhr of Union Theological Seminary, was published a manifesto signed by 49 U. S. religious leaders. They —Harry Emerson Fosdick, Mary Emma Woolley, Sherwood Eddy, Kirby Page, Rabbi Stephen Samuel Wise, et al.—said they, too, would weigh issues before fighting. Some swore they would never war. Last week, under the leadership of Editor Charles Clayton Morrison of The Christian Century, the U. S. religious press-both conservative and liberal, urban and provincial—squared off, prepared to line up its readers. The Roman Catholic press had already voiced sharp protests.

Sponsored by 27 journals was a petition: a “Declaration of an American Citizen.” Because the Supreme Court decision in the Bland-Macintosh case held that a native-born U. S. citizen is obliged (as is supposed to be inherent in the oath of allegiance) to bear arms, the petition makes the following declaration: “I, a citizen of the United States, solemnly refuse to acknowledge the obligation which the Supreme Court declares to be binding upon all citizens, whether native-born or naturalized. I have not promised, expressly or tacitly, to accept an act of Congress as the final interpretation of the will of God, and I will not do so. In my allegiance to my country I withhold nothing, not even my life. But I cannot give my conscience. That belongs to God. . . .” This petition, containing many a ”whereas,” is to be signed by as many people as possible and sent off to Congress. Copies will also be run off to be distributed at public gatherings.

In the vanguard of the petition-circulators last week were The Christian Century and The Living Church. Not only did they print the declaration, but both analyzed the case, gave much space to emphasizing its significance. Editorialized The Living Church: “If THIS BE TREASON. . . . We had supposed that it was generally recognized that it is not only our right but our duty to disobey a law which we deem to be immoral and contrary to God’s will—and to take the consequences. . . .’ Said The Christian Century: “Our readers … are listening to the almost unanimous voice of the Christian press of the nation. . . The only way in which a spiritual faith can be kept alive in the United States under this decision is to protest repudiate . . . work for its correction. . . .”

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