While the argument has thus far proceeded on the assumption that the
church, in spite of certain questionable teachings, is to be taken at
its own valuation as a moral agency, fidelity to truth demands the plain
statement of the fact that such definite particulars as are available
fail to bear out the claims so positively put forward. This is
especially true of our criminal statistics. Even on the most generous
calculations, the church membership of the country embraces considerably
less than half of the population. If the church were so powerful a moral
factor as its supporters declare it to be, we should expect to find the
average criminal a wholly irreligious being, with no contact or sympathy
with the doctrines of Christianity. What we actually observe is that of
all the criminals in penitentiaries in this country, not less than 75
per cent, are of Christian antecedents and profess a belief in religious
dogmas; while the number of Christian preachers convicted of crime is so
large as to be almost incredible, in spite of the fact that most
cases of minor clerical offenses and some of the more serious ones are
systematically hushed up, to avoid public scandal for the church.*
* See "Religion and Roguery," by Franklin Steiner. Price 10
cents. For sale by The Truth Seeker Co. Also "Crimes of
Preachers," for sale by the same. Price, 35 cents,
Benefit of clergy, though theoretically as obsolete as it is inexcusable
in a secular democracy, is known to all who are on the inside to be
a tangible fact in our land today. It is one of the forms of indecent
favoritism of which the church and its agents are always eager to avail
themselves. In any one of the annual reports of the Society for the
Suppression of Vice, the reader may observe that the late Anthony
Comstock, though an excessively pious Christian and hater of all
forms of unbelief, bears reluctant testimony in tabular form to the
overwhelming preponderance of religious offenders among those whose
convictions he has secured. For example, the total number of arrests
for crimes against the obscenity and lottery laws from March, 1872, to
January, 1915, was 3,641. Of these (annual report for 1914) 1078 were
Jews, 964 Catholics, 954 Protestants, and 564 of no known religion,
leaving only 80 to be distributed among the several classes of
Freethinkers, Spiritualists and "heathen." The figures speak for
themselves. Turning from statistics to scientific criminology, we find
abundant confirmation of the close relation between religion and crime.
So far from being a restraint, religious faith of a very intense sort is
commonly found closely associated with criminal tendencies, and is
one of the most marked characteristics of the typical criminal. This
conclusion, unpalatable though it is to the defenders of the churches,
is irrefutably proven valid by the most competent observers. (See "The
Criminal," by Havelock Ellis, fourth edition, pages 185-190, with facts
and citations from Ferri, Garofalo, Casanova, et al.) Let it not be
thought that the writer is here attempting to prove that religion is
a frequent cause of crime. It is enough to show that it is practically
inoperative as an inhibition. The many good men and women who are also
pious put the cart before the horse in crediting their religion with
their moral character. Whatever ethical elements the higher forms of
religion contain in theory, it is not these on which the incidence
is laid in religious teaching or in the performance of religious
ceremonies. Consequently, no matter how much is said in the churches of
righteousness, as an observed sociological fact religion has little to
do with it, one way or the other. The good man or woman, on becoming
religious, remains good; the bad man or woman does not cease to be bad
because of possessing a strong religious faith and participating in
religious exercises. Those who have been both virtuous and religious all
their lives would have been no less virtuous if they had never heard
of religion. Even the tyro in the study of the evolution of religious
belief knows that primitive forms of religion are entirely void of
ethical content. The moral imperative is a gradual development of the
social instinct; while the religious "instinct" is the reaction of the
individual to external influences which inspire him, in his ignorance
of their real nature and of their subjection to iron laws of cause
and effect, with fear and wonder. (Admiration, gratitude for imagined
favors, hope for protection and support, and other forms of mental or
emotional reaction, come somewhat later, and are efficient in reshaping
the primitive phases of religion into more specific conceptions of
anthropomorphic deities.) In the course of time, it becomes natural that
the worshiper of beings above himself, to whom his supreme reverence is
due, should come to endow those beings with the highest qualities he is
capable of conceiving, and hence should represent them as authors of the
moral law which has become an ingrained part of his personal and social
existence. Yet it remains a fact with both the savage and the civilized
man that his moral conceptions change from age to age, and that his
attribution of any particular ethical mandate to his deity is always an
afterthought. In other words, both in general and in detail, morality
caused and determined by social needs and the growth of the social
spirit precedes morality under a religious sanction, and would persist,
even if all forms of religion should be annihilated. The church does not
create moral standards for the community, but is at most a register of
them. Without the church, it is probable that few individuals would
be either more or less moral than with it; they would simply use other
terms in which to interpret their moral sentiments to themselves and
others. There need then be no fear of the consequences of recalling the
churches to the exercise of common honesty. As recipients of graft, they
can certainly not claim to exemplify the morality which they profess to
teach. Such of them as cannot live without theft from the taxpayers are
better dead, since their dependence on dishonesty for existence must
more than nullify any conceivable good which they can do the community
by the hollow mockery of teaching a morality which they do not practice.
On the other hand, such churches as find it possible to live on an
honorable basis, without claiming a subsidy, will stand some chance of
being listened to when they seek to preach morality to others.