Our fight against church graft is not new, for through the ages of human
history men slow in learning the lesson of equal liberty have made this
warfare inevitable. Even those honestly desirous to be fair have found
it easy to cheat themselves with convenient sophistry, and to frame
fantastic reasons for deeming the public weal inseparably bound up
with their particular group of dogmas, so that the good of mankind must
require the submission of dissenters to the popular creed. That
the whole community should be forced to support the church appeared
axiomatic to the New England of Governor Bradford, Cotton Mather and
Jonathan Edwards. The settlement of Rhode Island by Roger Williams and
his associates, on the basis of complete religious liberty, was the
first event to startle Puritanism into a realization that the right
of the church to control the state was not as self-evident as had been
thought. Later were heard bold voices to demand that the church take its
proper position in the community as a voluntary body of believers,
free to worship in its own fashion, and leaving all others free to do
likewise or not to worship at all. And finally the foremost and boldest
thinkers began to see that there could be no equal justice while
unbelievers were mulcted in taxation to support the churches. One of
the first protests against the wrong which still prevails, although now
disguised under the form of exemption, took the shape of a memorial to
the general court (legislature) of Massachusetts in 1775. The core of
the argument is contained in the following paragraph:
"For a civil legislature to impose religious tax is, we conceive, a
power which their constituents never had to give, and therefore going
entirely out of their jurisdiction. We are persuaded that an entire
freedom from being taxed by civil rulers to religious worship is not a
mere favor from any man or men in the world, but a right and property
granted us by God, who commands us to stand fast to it. We should wrong
our consciences by allowing that power to men which we believe belongs
only to God."
In the same spirit, the pious and learned Rev. Dr. Wayland, in his
"Political Economy," wrote:
"All that religious societies have a right to ask of the civil
government is the same privileges for transacting their own affairs
which societies of every other sort possess. This they have a right
to demand, not because they are religious societies, but because the
exercise of religion is an innocent mode of pursuing happiness. If it
happens accidentally that others are benefited, it does not follow that
they are obliged to pay for this benefit. It cannot be proved that the
Christian religion needs the support of the civil government, since it
has existed and flourished when entirely deprived of this support."