Civil religion

“ Indeed, the right of a society or government to interfere in matters of religion will hardly be contested by any persons, who believe that piety, religion, and morality are intimately connected with the well being of the state, and indispensable to the administration of civil justice. The promulgation of the great doctrines of religion, the being, and attributes, and providence of one Almighty God ”

“ How much better are modern Pagan nations? These evils have been extinguished in the ratio of the circulation and influence of the Bible. The relation between the state and its citizens the Bible recognizes as of divine appointment; the foundation of civil government is the will of God. Government is an ordinance of God. “The powers that be are ordained of God.” The great author of our rights, life, liberty, peace, order, public morals and religion, has not left these interests to chance, anarchy or the social compact. ”

“ But if any man peaceably sets forth his own views respecting religion, appealing to men’s reason and conscience and the visible universe, or the Scriptures, we do not hold that the civil authorities are justified in going about to punish or silence him, or in excluding him from civil rights. ”

“ Lastly, in religion, the sovereign body was entitled to impose a civil profession of faith, and to compel all its citizens, under penalties of banishment and death, to believe in the existence of a beneficent God, in an immortal life, in the reward of the just and the chastisement of the wicked, in the obligation of the Social Contract and of the laws. ”

“ As Christianity made progress, the unnatural severity with which this class of human beings was treated became relaxed, and as the civil law ameliorated their condition, the canon law, by its spiritual efficacy, came in with the aid of religion, to secure that, the followers of the Saviour should give full force to the merciful provisions that were introduced. ”

“ If any man say that the laws of the Church have not binding force unless confirmed by the civil power, and that it is competent to the civil power to judge or decree in causes where religion is implicated, let him be anathema.
The logical succession of ideas was manifest. The first five Canons established the principle that the Christian Church is a society which has Form, Visibility, Unity, and is necessary to salvation. ”

“ But it is remarkable that almost all the cases where it does become a duty to resist the law, are those in which religion is concerned,—those, in short, in which the civil legislature has gone out of its own province; as when a man is required to profess or renounce, to preach or abstain from preaching, a certain religion ”

“ Some, overlooking the twofold agency, partly civil, partly ecclesiastical, by which the Most High promotes his own ends and the well being of his creatures, have resolved each into the other, making religion an affair of the state, and civil government a matter for ecclesiastical influence ”

“ We know, and, what is better, we feel inwardly, that religion is the basis of civil society, and the source of all good, and of all comfort. ”

“ Be it therefore enabled by the General Assembly, That no man shall be compelled to frequent or support any religious worship, place or ministry whatsoever, nor shall be enforced, restrained, molested, or burthened in his body or goods, nor shall otherwise suffer on account of his religious opinions or belief; but that all men shall be free to profess, and by argument to maintain, their opinions in matters of religion and that the same shall in no wise diminish, enlarge, or affect their civil capacities. ”

“ While it respects religion for its beneficial influence upon civil society, it recognizes the right of each individual to worship God according to the dictates of his own conscience, without prejudice or interference. ”

“ in America religion is the road to knowledge, and the observance of the divine laws leads man to civil freedom. ”

“ Nay, if we may openly speak the truth, and as becomes one man to another, neither Pagan nor Mahometan, nor Jew, ought to be excluded from the civil rights of the commonwealth because of his religion. ”

“ The subjects then owe the Sovereign an account of their opinions only to such an extent as they matter to the community. Now, it matters very much to the community that each citizen should have a religion. ”

“ Hence we easily perceive that much of the more modern portion of the corpus juris civilis, though bearing the impress of imperial authority, is in reality little more than a copy of the rules laid down previously for the spiritual and social guidance of the children of the church, and that those grand principles and delicate distinctions which are as true to-day as in the time of the apostles, and are as applicable to our advanced state of civilization as they were then, are simply the result of the infusion of the spirit of Christianity into the civil polity of a once pagan people. ”

“ Such denominations are, I submit, those most likely to reform themselves, and as they come to offer various examples of a Christian society, where wealth is without self-assertion, where poverty is without shame, where unemployment and ignorance are prevented by just views of human claims, and where joy is “in widest commonalty spread,” all the members of the community will in such examples better find the name of the Most High, and feel the power of religion. ”

“ We do not believe it just to mingle religious influence with civil government, whereby one religious society is fostered and another proscribed in its spiritual privileges, and the individual rights of its members, as citizens, denied. ”

“ State must, on the one hand, respect the conscience of its citizens, leaving them free in religious opinions and practices; and yet, on the other hand, it must seek to promote the interests of true religion, with whose prosperity the public welfare is vitally connected. ”

“ Citizens of the Protestant Faith, the law has equally extended its solicitude to your interests. Let the morality, so pure, so holy, so brotherly, which you profess, unite you all in love to your country, and in respect for its laws; and, above all, never permit disputes on doctrinal points to weaken that universal charity which religion at once inculcates and commands. ”

“ How far that part of the system of supporting religion in America, which appeals to the pride and public spirit of the citizens, in erecting and maintaining religious institutions on a respectable footing, in towns, cities, and villages, and among rival sects—and in this manner operating as a species of constraint—is worthy to be called voluntary, we pretend not to say. ”

“ Faith is everywhere the support of the laws and the constitution, the foundation, therefore, of the social fabric, which could hardly hold together at all if religion did not lend weight to the authority of government and the dignity of the ruler. ”

“ Social duties come as really within the field of religious obligation, as any other duties. "The fifth commandment requireth the preserving the honor and performing the duties belonging to every one in their several places and relations, as superiors, inferiors, and equals." As men, in any relationship we hold, neighbors, citizens of the state, children, parents, or any other earthly connection, religion extends its authority over us; and our conduct in each one of these relationships constitutes a part of our holiness or our sin. ”

“ We demand that all laws looking to the enforcement of “Christian” morality shall be abrogated, and that all laws shall be conformed to the requirements of natural morality, equal rights, and impartial liberty.
9. We demand that not only in the constitutions of the United States and of the several States, but also in the practical administration of the same, no privileges or advantage shall be conceded to Christianity or any other special religion; that our entire political system shall be founded and administered on a purely secular basis ”

“ It seems to petrify or congeal national life, placing each individual in the position of a member of a pure theocracy, rather than in that of a patriotic citizen of a country, or member of a nationality. In these States law, government and social customs have no existence apart from religion, and, indeed, they grow out of it. ”

“ Civilization introduces the element of order, establishes the reign of law in the individual, in the family, in the state, in society, which is not possible without a religion true enough to enlighten the intellect, and powerful enough over conscience to restrain the passions within their proper bounds, and to bend the will to submission. ”

“ A superior civilisation, a clearer understanding of the principles of civil and religious liberty, a more tolerant temper now prevail, but there is as much conscientiousness still; and now as ever, in this and in every land, men, deeply imbued with the principles of Christianity, will be found ready to bear the testimony of the advocate or the confessor, as events demand. ”

“ But on the other side we see a tendency, even more manifest if we look for external signs, to emphasise the institutional side of religion, that which prompts men and women to combine in sacred societies, to cherish enthusiastic loyalties for the Church of their early education or of their later choice, to find their chief satisfaction in acts of corporate worship, and to subordinate their individual tastes and beliefs to the common tradition and discipline of a historical body. ”

“ That the people have an equal, natural, and unalienable right freely and peaceably to exercise their religion, according to the dictates of conscience; and that no religious sect or society ought to be favored or established by law in preference to others. ”

“ We are also reminded and reaffirm that all human beings have the right, not only to pray and worship according to their consciences, but to practice their faith in their homes, schools, charities, and businesses in private and in the public square free from government coercion, discrimination, or persecution. Religion is not merely an intellectual exercise, but also a practical one that demands action in the world. ”

“ In brief, the member of a religious community believes himself to have risen into a world of spiritual freedom, untrammelled by the prohibition and compulsion which in civil history are called law and politics ”

“ If the Church has been constituted by her divine founder a true and perfect Society distinct from the civil power and independent of it, with a plenary threefold authority, legislative, judicial, and coercive, no confusion will arise in the movements of human society, or in the exercise of the rights of the two powers. ”

“ It is organized religion that here makes its claim to fealty, as organized liberty, organized justice do, in man's communal life. There is a joint and general consent in the masses of men with similar experience united into the Church, with respect to the religious way of life, similar to that of such masses united into a government with respect to secular things. ”

“ For us, they are complicated on the social as well as the religious side by certain theories that are in vogue. The duty of civil government, for example, is on one side extended beyond its proper range by the attempt to give it authority in the domain of religious truth ”

“ There is therefore a purely civil profession of faith of which the Sovereign should fix the articles, not exactly as religious dogmas, but as social sentiments without which a man cannot be a good citizen or a faithful subject. ”

“ Wherever they meet to worship, there they will meet to consult of their plans, hopes, and progress, as at once a distinct race and a part of the American people. Their religion is tinged with political thought, and their political thought shaped by religious conviction. ”

“ Long has our common mother called you to her breast.’ The doctrine of ‘the Divine right of kings,’ taught or supported by almost every sect, is the foundation of the old civil system, and has long given authority, dignity and stability to the kingdoms of Europe; and the doctrine of the Divine appointment and authority of the clergy has hindered God's children from progressing in Divine things and bound them by the chains of superstition and ignorance to the veneration and adoration of fallible fellow-beings, and to their doctrines, traditions and interpretations of God's Word. ”

“ So soon as the world shall be converted to the true faith, and religious theory and practice made to accord, the necessity of civil laws and judicial tribunals will cease —the world will be one great brotherhood, and the laws of God as expounded by the priesthood will be the only needed rules of life and morals. ”

“ A union of the Protestants, Jews, Spiritualists, Free Religionists, Infidels, Atheists, Turners, Free Germans, and of all non-Catholics, without regard to creed, race or color, on a basis of universal civil and religious liberty, with a judicious policy, and a corresponding system of measures, will prove adequate to the emergency. ”

“ Modern civilized communities are believed capable of existing without an official religion; the citizens being free to form themselves into self-governed religious bodies, as various as the prevailing modes of religious belief. ”

“ All residents in the Realm enjoy entire freedom of faith and of conscience. The undisturbed practice of religion is guaranteed by the constitution and under the protection of the State. General legislation shall not be affected thereby. ”

“ Religion remains; and here, at least, it may be thought, is an agency that may be relied on for lifting men's eyes and minds above the dust at their feet. But religion, even supposing it to escape perversion for the purposes of despotism, ceases in these circumstances to be a social concern, and narrows into a personal affair between an individual and his Maker, in which the issue at stake is but his private salvation. ”

“ In keeping with this fact it is found that in those countries where the greatest changes and modifications of government and occupation have occurred, there have the religions undergone the greatest modification to fit the new order of things. If it were the religion that determined the matter, civilization and morals would be immovable, and legislation would revolve around, the guidance of the Church. ”