3. General Principles of the Relations of Church and State. The Parallel of Soul and Body. The Foundation of the American State and its Relationship to the Religious Principle. The Origin of Every Right According to the “Declaration of Independence.” The Connection of the State and Religion. The Relationship of the State to Religious Differences. (Cont.) (2)

If the church were one, then the state would necessarily have to carry out its subordination to it down to more particular details; but since there are many churches and religious communities differing from one another in the details of their doctrine, the state limits its connection with religion and its assistance to it only to that principle which is common to all of them, though in this common principle it acts more by the prompting of the dominant religion than others; assists Christianity more, for example, than Judaism, and legally protects the sanctity of the Lord’s Day rather than the Sabbath. But how does the state relate to the particular churches and communities as diverse expressions of one common religio-moral principle? It relates to them precisely as only to diverse expressions of this common principle recognized by it. Each church or community considers itself true, and the state has no spiritual competence and cannot judge either for itself or for its citizens which church or community is truly the expresser of the spiritual order. It therefore leaves and must leave to the citizens themselves the responsibility of making this judgment, they must decide for themselves and answer before God for the correctness of their judgment. Their decision is law for the state, and it must respect and obey it, whether this decision be made by a majority or a minority, for the state recognizes equal rights for all its citizens and cannot make distinctions among them. The church that represents the spiritual order for the state is the church that has been adopted by its citizens; but since they embrace different churches, it can recognize and give effect to the canons and ordinances of each of them only in relation to its own members, and then only insofar as they do not violate the equal rights of others. In a perfectly Christian society such a relation of the state to the church would be insufficient; but this is all it can do where different churches exist and exist with equal rights before it. Since the state recognizes them all as diverse expressions of one common moral-Christian principle recognized by it itself, but has no competence to judge which of them is the most complete and truest expresser and interpreter of this principle, it recognizes equal rights to all of them, equally protects each of them, and gives force to its laws and ordinances, but only in respect to those citizens who recognize its authority. It protects, for example, order and unobstructed performance of worship in all churches of whatsoever confession, and any disturber of worship is subject to arrest. This does not signify indifference of the state to religion; it signifies only that the state has no claim to the right to judge which is the true church, and considers it its duty to respect and patronize every church recognized as such by its citizens. The doctrine that man is completely free before God to choose whatever religion he wishes or to remain in complete unbelief, in principle finds no recognition from the American state and is contrary to its fundamental constitution. Therefore atheistic or false sects in essence in themselves have no rights before the state, such as they do not serve as expressers and interpreters of the spiritual order and are contrary to the true interests of society. But in a society where they exist alongside more true churches, the state must respect in them too the rights of the spiritual order, not because they consider themselves true, of course, but because they are considered such by a certain part of its citizens, and all its citizens have equal rights in the civic order, and consequently an equal right to the protection of their conscience. By equally protecting all churches and communities, equally guarding the rights of all of them to complete freedom of action and complete development of their powers, the state reserves for itself only the hope that truth will triumph of itself, and that error by this very freedom will only serve to reveal more fully its inner weakness and impotence.

Such are the general principles of the American system of the relation of religion and the state. By the meaning of it the Roman Catholic Church receives equal rights with all other churches and confessions, and enjoys the same protection and respect from the state. But for it these rights did not immediately find practical significance after their proclamation in principle. Thanks to the hostile prejudice against it prevalent during the colonial period, the general rights of religious conscience in their application to it met with opposition from the prejudice still living, and they were extended to it only slowly, as the prejudice weakened and the idea of freedom of religious conscience gained greater currency. The slow action of the common principle of religious freedom of conscience for Catholics is explained by the relation of the federal constitution of the Union to the constitutions of individual states.