In thus granting an indiscriminate subsidy to a vast number of doctrinal
bodies, the state violates the fundamental doctrine of democratic
neutrality and impartiality. It favors a portion of the community at the
expense of all the rest. The millions of dollars which are thus given
back to the churches do not come out of the air, but out of the pockets
of the taxpaying citizens. It is the worst form of taxation without
representation. It places a premium on dogmatic faith. It is an
establishment of religion in direct defiance of the spirit of the
Constitution. Contrary to the rudimentary principles of democracy, it
places the state in the position of formally endorsing the proposition
that religion is a public function and not an affair of the private
conscience. It differs from medievalism only in degree, but not a whit
in kind. It is worse than robbing Peter to pay Paul; it is robbing Peter
and Paul to pay Judas.
Rights of Conscience Disregarded. Not only is exemption from taxation a
covert subsidy for the spread of doctrinal proselytism; not only does
it place the state in the position of paying for the circulation of
incomparably more error than truth; not only does it rob part of the
community for the benefit of another part; not only does it violate
the principles of justice and of impartiality as among the conflicting
beliefs of its various citizens; not only does it force the taxpayers
to support religion, whether they wish to do so or not; not only does it
unite church and state in defiance of democracy and equal liberty; but
it constitutes a direct and deliberate violation of the fundamental
rights of conscience. It is not a mere matter of making individuals pay
for that toward which they are indifferent; it is stealing their money
to assist in the circulation of dogmas which they regard as positively
pernicious and evil. In a democracy, all citizens possess the same
rights, and can lawfully be called upon to surrender no freedom or
prerogative except for some public end of paramount consequence.
No majority, however large, can offer the faintest valid excuse for
trampling on the private convictions of the humblest member of society.
By all uncorrupted minds, it would be at once recognized as the most
glaring tyranny to demand that any individual be compelled to make
public or private profession of a faith in which he did not actually
believe, or that he be required to participate in public worship against
the dictates of his own reason and conscience. Such infamies have been
perpetrated in the history of mankind; but they are now justly abhorred
by all who have assimilated the elementary lessons of civilization.
No longer are men and women hunted down as heretics for their honest
inability to believe that a muttered priestly conjuration can turn a
cracker into the flesh of a deity or a cup of wine into his blood. No
longer are the fires of persecution kindled for those whose mathematical
training has made them incapable of accepting the paradox that one is
three and three are one. The thumbscrew and the rack no longer punish
with a hell on earth all who have too high an opinion of any God whom
they can conceive as existing to believe that he is so vile a monster
as to have prepared a hell beyond the grave for any of his own children.
Even in the backward countries where democracy and religious liberty are
equally obnoxious to the powers that make their rule a curse to their
subjects, and where the miserable thing known as a state church thrives
to the fullest extent, such concessions to the growing decency of the
world have been forced upon a reluctant priestcraft, that its venom
is largely drawn. Once in a long time, after years of patient and
incalculably subtle plotting for its nefarious end, it may achieve a
crowning infamy, such as the murder of a Francisco Ferrer; and even for
this triumph it pays dearly in the end, by arousing against itself
the loathing of all that is honorable on earth. In the main, however,
priestcraft, growl as it may, even in the lands where its strength for
mischief is greatest, can only suppress free speech, free press and
free assemblage; indulge in acts of petty persecution, which arouse
resentment rather than inspire terror; punish refusal to bow to a
religious procession or indulgence in the expression of honest opinion
with fine or relatively brief imprisonment. It can annoy, but it can no
longer crush.