87 RELIGIOUS ENCYCLOPEDIA
United Evangelical Church United States
line was drawn between Church and State. Upon this constitution they stood united as a compact nation, with a sovereign national government. At their head was a president, elected every four years. The happy issue of the war of independence compelled such churches as the Episcopal and the Methodist, which had formerly been united with the English bodies, to form separate organizations, on the basis of universal civil and religious liberty. Favored by the uncommon fertility of the soil, the exhaustless mineral wealth, numberless avenues of trade, and free institutions which afforded the fullest play to individual enterprise, and at the same time guaranteed complete security to person and property, the United States has ever since, but particularly during the last fifty years, advanced in a way unparalleled in history. The number of inhabitants has grown since 1800, when it was 5,000,- 000, until, according to the official census of 1910, it was 91,972,267, exclusive of Porto Rico and the Philippines. The number of states in the same period has increased [mostly by the organization of the Northwest Territory (1787), the Louisiana Purchase (1803), Florida (1820), and California and New Mexico (1848)], from thirteen to forty-eight; and besides these there is Alaska, as well as the District of Columbia (the seat of the national government). Up to 1840 the total immigration, from all sources, had not exceeded half a million. Then began the flood. During the next 25 3. The years, the United States received Problem of 6,000,000 foreigners, mostly from Ire- Immigra- land and Germany. Between 1865 tion. and 1885 more than 7,000,000 were added to the foreign population. Their quality had not improved. The Irish and German tides were ebbing, while those of southern and eastern Europe were both increasing and threatening. One hundred and sixty American cities, each with a population of more than 25,000 and an aggregate population of 20,000,000, show 53.7 per cent, or more than one-half, foreign-born or of foreign parentage. In this sense it is true, as sometimes declared, that American cities are more foreign than American; all of which constitutes a serious religious problem. Yet hand in hand with the increase in the number of states and inhabitants go industry, wealth, and general culture. The United States has not had to struggle through 2,000 years, out of barbarism to civilization, as the countries of the old world have done. It fell heir to their progress, but with it have come the old world’s evils. And the new world has also its troubles, arising from haste after wealth, from reckless speculation, and those misunderstandings between capital and labor which issue sometimes in blood. It is almost incredible how quickly the chaotic confusion of so many different peoples thrown together under one general government is reduced to order, how thoroughly the new dwellers are assimilated in the body politic. Thus it has come about that the type of American civilization is Anglo-Saxon, and the speech English. The enormous increase of population adds proportionally to the field of labor and to the member-
ship of the different churches. America is the land of church erection, of formation of congregations, and of every conceivable ecclesiastical and religious experiment, in which there are not missing the elements of fanaticism, hypocrisy, and humbug. It is the seed-plot of almost all branches of the Christian Church, and there is no check put upon their fullest development.
The religious life in the United States is in general like that of other lands; but it presents some peculiar features, which are stated in the following paragraphs.
II. Separation of Church and State: A distinction must be made between the general government and the individual states. The general government has
been from the beginning limited to po- 1. The litical affairs, and has nothing to do
General with the internal arrangements of the Government several states, and especially with any-
and the thing relating to religion. ‘The consti-
Church. tution, adopted under Washington in
1787, provides, ‘‘ No religious tests shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust under the United States” (Art. vi. § 3). And even more emphatically speaks the first amendment, made by the first congress, 1789: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof, or abridging the freedom of speech or of the press, or of the rights of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.”” In this way there was secured, on the one hand, the separation of the Church from the! government, and, on the other, the free, unhindered exercise of religion in every way which does not endanger the State or public morals. The above-quoted articles are not only a declaration of independence of federal control, they are also a declaration of the independence of the Church from the civil power. They did not originate in indifference to religion, but, on the contrary, in so great a respect that their framers would separate religion permanently from the defiling influence of politics, and guarantee to the whole people in a solemn manner religious along with civil liberty. The two institutions, Church and State, were not set opposite each other as foes, but side by side as the two different spheres of the social life, in the conviction that each should restrict rts jurisdiction to its own immediate concerns, because the attempt of one to rule the other was sure to issue disastrously. The power of the State is consequently, in the United States, reduced to narrower limits than in Europe, where it has control over the Church. The American status of the Church differs from the hierarchical patronage of the State by the Church, from the imperial and papal patronage of the Church by the State, and also from the pre-Constantinian separation and persecution of the Church by the heathen State: hence the United States presents a new phase in the history of the relation of the two powers.
This separation between Church and State is not to be understood as a separation of the nation from Christianity; for the State represents, in America, only the temporal interests of the people. The independent churches care for the religious and moral
United States