A Warning From the Past
Brian E. Strayer September/October 2024Seventh-day Adventist editor Joseph Waggoner was a firsthand witness to the threats to civil and religious liberties in America from the 1850s to the 1880s. He was not blind to the faults he saw in a Southern-controlled Congress. In 1858 he condemned the federal government for its “slaveocratic practices” and declared that in Congress, the army, the navy, the executive and judicial branches, “corruption stalks through the National Capitol with shameless front, and eagerly plies her trade with scarcely a rebuke.” Government officials were guilty of “intrigue or double-dealing”; city governments were “proverbially corrupt,” with bribery, dishonesty, and demagoguery the order of the day. Speaking in a prophetic tone, Waggoner saw nothing but “the flames of civil war and anarchy,” for “we are certainly near the perilous abyss.”1
Waggoner was concerned that the Religious Amendment Association (RAA) would make the United States “a Christian nation” by enforcing “Christian laws” (including Sunday blue laws). In 1874 he penned several articles against this movement. He also expressed shock that at the fifth National RAA Convention in Pittsburgh, 54,000 people had signed a petition asking Congress to pass a religious amendment. He admitted that “we have underestimated, rather than overestimated, the rapid growth and power of this movement.” Waggoner wrote an article for the Pittsburgh Daily Post outlining Adventists’ objections to Sunday laws. He argued that government had no right to enforce Christian institutions; that the amendment would be “subversive of . . . freedom of conscience”; that “pure morality by force is also an impossibility”; and that Adventists protested all religious laws and tests as de facto uniting civil and religious power. Waggoner feared that in a future “Inquisition,” Jews, Seventh Day Baptists, and Seventh-day Adventists would be denied their right to worship on the Sabbath.2
Waggoner believed that a “spirit of intolerance” and “religious bigotry” existed everywhere. Protestants attacked Adventists for opposing the religious amendment.3 A vice president of the RAA declared that if he had his way, he would imprison Adventists who distributed their literature on the trains. A “Doctor of Divinity” called Adventists “atheists” for opposing the amendment, and expressed a desire to send them to lunatic asylums “where they could not disturb the peace of their neighbors.”4 Waggoner also felt that the Christian Statesman was stirring up religious bigotry that would lead to “a religious struggle which must be as disastrous in its results to the piety of the conquering party as it will be to the rights of the conquered.”5
Despite amendment advocates’ promises of religious “toleration,” Waggoner feared that their real intentions would lead only to fines, imprisonment, and death for nonconformists.6 He highlighted their hypocrisy in preaching that the world was growing morally better while calling for a religious amendment;7 in proclaiming religious toleration while fining or jailing those who worked on Sunday; and in claiming to uphold the Constitution while working to merge church and state.8
As editor of the American Sentinel, Waggoner used this paper to vindicate the rights of American citizens; to explain the true relation of morality and religion; to oppose Sunday laws and “religious oppression”; to defend liberty of conscience and separation of church and state; and to expose the hypocrisy of Protestants and politicians at all levels.9 His bugbears included secularized Christianity,10 “corrupted religionists,”11 and the National Reform Association.12 He warned that the policies of the NRA would eventually unite church and state, cause “endless religious disputes” in Congress, establish ecclesiastical courts in America, and take the U.S. back to the Dark Ages when the Inquisition burned heretics at the stake.13
Furthermore, he predicted that the RAA and NRA advocates would attract “political hacks,” “demagogues,” and “hypocritical” politicians who professed Christianity simply to gain public office, after which they would sell political offices like railroad stocks.14
Waggoner’s jabs raised the ire of the NRA and the editors of the Christian Statesman. When the NRA’s secretary, J. H. Leiper, wrote that the American Sentinel had grown out of “voluntary darkness or willful infidelity,” Waggoner called Leiper deceived, blind, and a “self-styled” reformer who was sadly ignorant of the truth and whose words exhibited “more arrogance than argument.”15 He feared that in following the Bible literally, the NRA would revive the witch hunts of Salem, Massachusetts, when “bigoted” church leaders committed “folly” and “wanton violence” by hanging innocent women. Such “bigotry and misguided zeal” could arise again in America, he warned.16 In a subsequent article he argued that government cannot enforce morals on a moral basis—only on a civil basis, because “it cannot reform the conscience; it cannot renew the heart.”17 But if the NRA achieved the power it coveted to enforce religious laws, “then we may well fear, for somebody will surely be crushed under the wheels of their modern Juggernaut.”18
In the second volume of the Sentinel he promised hard-hitting attacks on the NRA, whose proponents, he feared, would soon establish a “second papal system” in America19 that rivaled what the Mormons had accomplished in Utah, where the Latter-day Saints dominated the state government.20 Even worse, they might copy the example of the crafty politician Constantine, a “heathen ruler” who enforced a “heathen edict” in A.D. 321 to support the “heathen practice” of worshiping Apollo, the sun god, on Sunday. As a result, “luxury and pomp” corrupted the church, and pure religion became “force or fraud.”21 If that happened, America would become like Catholic France, Spain, Italy, and the Latin American nations, where the state was subordinated to the church.22
To those who supported prayer and Bible reading in public schools, he warned: “To maintain them in the public schools is not only very difficult, but very hazardous.” Instead, he promoted the value of religious liberty and freedom of conscience above the “inquisitorial” practices that would follow enforced worship in public schools. “To delegate the teaching of religion to the State,” he declared, “is as great an incongruity as to turn a church meeting into a political caucus.” What was needed was a “higher standard of religious instruction” at home and in the church.23
Defending religious liberty raised Waggoner’s blood pressure as he combated the efforts of the RAA and the NRA to make America Christian again. The “studied silence” of these groups in ignoring his exposures of their “errors and sophistries” and their ignorance of historical facts annoyed him. “The self-styled Reformers may rest assured,” he thundered, “that . . . accusations of ignorance of history, of the Bible, and of government, in which they have freely indulged, are poor substitutes for argument.”24
Repeatedly he emphasized that morality is not the same as religion; that the U.S. government is not a religious system; and that “our government is not a remedial system,” but a “civil, legal system.” Even if the government were run by atheists, he declared, it would still enact laws against murder, theft, adultery, and perjury to protect human rights.25
Waggoner occasionally indulged in name-calling: He labeled stockbrokers and speculators “anarchists” for stealing the fruit of the labors of others that they had not earned. The NRA evinced “the spirit of Popery” by denigrating all religions but their own.26 The NRA was attempting to foist five major deceptions on the American people: closing saloons only on Sundays; enforcing Sunday as a day of rest; making Sunday worship a symbol of loyalty to the state; declaring that forced Sunday worship interfered with no one’s rights of conscience; and denouncing Sabbathkeepers as “traitors to the laws of God and man.”27
Waggoner’s two years in Europe (1887-1889) provided him with additional “ammunition” to fight the “despotism” he saw arising everywhere. In Russia, where the czar was the head of the Orthodox Church and the empire, no proselytizing was allowed; Adventist minister and American citizen Louis Conradi had been imprisoned 40 days for preaching the gospel. Great Britain, Germany, and Russia all had state-supported churches, and America, he feared, would do the same if ruled by the NRA. Dissenters would be seen as “rebels and traitors” to the state, as well as “heretics” to the church.28
When religious leaders and government officials collaborated to “Christianize” the state, Waggoner averred, factions and heresies inevitably resulted, as after Constantine’s Edict of A.D. 321. He feared that the rise of communism, socialism, nihilism, and anarchism indicated that the Protestant Reformation’s contributions to European Christianity had been overthrown and that “Protestantism is dead.”29
“No church can maintain the vitality and spirituality of religion, where national religion exists,” Waggoner asserted. Once the NRA established a national religion, people would be compelled to conform to the “national covenant.” But this would make them neither Christians nor religious, but hypocrites. “Shall the sad history of the [medieval] church repeat itself in the United States?” he asked.30
When Pope Leo XIII declared 1888 a Jubilee Year, Waggoner saw this as the beast of Revelation being restored to power. He listed the contents of many of the 500 boxes of expensive gifts sent to Leo by the various European nations, but predicted the pope’s downfall based on Revelation 18.31 He also saw the NRA and American Protestants “courting the favor of the Catholic Church.” Waggoner declared that the NRA “carries in its bosom, inherent in its nature, all the evils that have cropped out in the history of the Papacy.” The NRA will first deny Sabbathkeepers the vote, then take away their liberties, and finally their lives, he predicted. “The struggle for religious liberty in the United States,” he said, “is yet before us. . . . But signs and events are proving that it yet stands on a very slender footing.”32 He predicted in 1889 that if the NRA’s program were carried out, it would create a nation of hypocritical citizens full of “churchly worldliness and worldly ambition”; furthermore, it would undermine the republic.33
It is certainly tempting to interpret this hyperbolic prose as mere posturing or as an attempt to sell more copies of Signs of the Times and American Sentinel. But there are some facts you need to know. In 1882, by a vote of 4 to 3, the California Supreme Court ruled that the new state Sunday law was constitutional.34 Between March and June of 1882 approximately 1,600 Jews, Adventists, Seventh Day Baptists, and Chinese immigrants were arrested, fined, or jailed for breaking this Sunday law. When Joseph Waggoner and W. C. White were arrested and fined for operating the Pacific Press Publishing Company on Sundays, the press was forced to shut down.35
In Sacramento, Waggoner asked the Republican-controlled legislature to repeal the Sunday law, but they refused.36 So he and Uriah Smith (editor of the Advent Review and Sabbath Herald) organized a 10-week campaign to repeal the law. Soon one newspaper after another was opposing it; juries began refusing to convict those arrested for Sunday labor, forcing the courts to dismiss 2,000 cases.37 Soon after the Democrats won the state elections in November, the Senate repealed the Sunday law on February 6, 1883, by a vote of 47 to 21. Quoting President James Garfield, Waggoner said: “God reigns, and the Nation still lives.”38
However, across the United States in the 1880s, more than 100 Adventists were arrested for working on Sunday. They paid more than $2,200 in fines; they served more than 1,400 days in jails and prisons and more than 450 days on chain gangs (especially in the South).39 After Joseph Waggoner’s death in 1889, his son Ellet and Alonzo Jones, as coeditors of the Signs and the Sentinel, continued the fight against state Sunday blue laws and against U.S. senator Henry Blair’s proposed national Sunday law. And they would win. And religious liberty advocates everywhere should be grateful that they did.
1 J. H. Waggoner, “National Degeneracy,” Review and Herald, Aug. 12, 1858, pp. 100, 101.
2 J. H. Waggoner, “The Religious Amendment,” Review and Herald, Feb. 7, 1874, pp. 76, 77; J. H. Waggoner, “Appeal and Protest,” Review and Herald, Feb. 17, 1874, p. 79; J. H. Waggoner, “Religious Amendment,” Review and Herald, Mar. 24, 1874, pp. 113-115; J. H. Waggoner, “The ‘Statesman’ on the Stand,” Review and Herald, Dec. 22, 1874, pp. 204, 205; J. H. Waggoner, “Defective Reasoning,” Signs of the Times, Oct. 16, 1879, p. 308.
3 J. H. Waggoner, “Spirit of Persecution,” Review and Herald, May 27, 1875, p. 173.
4 J. H. Waggoner, “The Spirit of It,” Review and Herald, Aug. 2, 1877, p. 45.
5 J. H. Waggoner, “Christian Statesman and the Jews,” Review and Herald, Sept. 14, 1876, p. 92.
6 J. H. Waggoner, “Consistency of the Christian Statesman,” Signs of the Times, Mar. 31, 1881, p. 150.
7 J. H. Waggoner, “Light of the World,” Signs of the Times, Sept. 8, 1881, p. 402.
8 J. H.Waggoner, “No Power but of God,” American Sentinel, January 1886, p. 5.
9 J. H. Waggoner, “The American Sentinel,” American Sentinel, January 1886, pp. 1, 2.
10 J. H. Waggoner, “Secularized Christianity,” American Sentinel, February 1886, pp. 9, 10.
11 J. H. Waggoner, “Catholic and Protestant,” American Sentinel, February 1886, p. 12.
12 J. H. Waggoner, “Policy of the New Government Outlined,” American Sentinel, March 1886, pp. 17-19; J. H. Waggoner, “Legalizing Christianity,” American Sentinel, April 1886, pp. 25, 26.
13 J. H. Waggoner, “Legalizing Christianity,” American Sentinel, April 1886, pp. 25, 26; J. H. Waggoner, “A Christian Nation,” American Sentinel, April 1886, pp. 26, 27.
14 J. H.Waggoner, “A Characteristic Expression,” American Sentinel, July 1886, pp. 49, 50.
15 J. H. Waggoner, “ ‘Secretary Leiper’ on the ‘American Sentinel,’ ” American Sentinel, September 1886, pp. 65-67.
16 J. H. Waggoner, “The Salem Witchcraft: A Lesson for Our Times,” American Sentinel, October 1886, pp. 73, 74.
17 J. H. Waggoner, “Religious Legislation,” American Sentinel, November 1886, pp. 81, 82.
18 J. H. Waggoner, “Is It Blindness, or Duplicity?” American Sentinel, December 1886, pp. 89, 90.
19 J. H.Waggoner, “The ‘American Sentinel,’ Volume 2,” American Sentinel, January 1887, pp. 1, 2.
20 J. H. Waggoner, “ ‘National Reform’ Principles Exemplified,” American Sentinel, February 1887, pp. 9, 10.
21 J. H. Waggoner, “Foundation in Usage,” American Sentinel, March 1887, pp. 17, 18.
22 J. H. Waggoner, “What Is the Harm?” American Sentinel, April 1887, pp. 25-27.
23 J. H. Waggoner, “Religion in the Public Schools,” American Sentinel, June 1887, pp. 41, 42.
24 J. H. Waggoner, “The Question Met—and Evaded!” American Sentinel, July 1887, pp. 51, 52.
25 J. H. Waggoner, “Superficial Criticisms,” American Sentinel, August 1887, pp. 59, 60.
26 J. H. Waggoner, “A Principle to Be Remembered,” American Sentinel, September 1887, pp. 65, 66.
27 J. H. Waggoner, “Christianity Means Honesty,” American Sentinel, December 1887, pp. 92, 93.
28 J. H. Waggoner, “Religious Despotism in Russia,” American Sentinel, January 1888, pp. 1, 2.
29 J. H. Waggoner, “The ‘Down-Grade’ Controversy,” Signs of the Times, Mar. 16, 1888, p. 168.
30 J. H. Waggoner, “The Baptists and National Reform,” American Sentinel, April 1888, pp. 26, 27.
31 J. H. Waggoner, “The Pope’s Jubilee,” Signs of the Times, Apr. 6, 1888, p. 217.
32 J. H. Waggoner, “Religious Wickedness,” American Sentinel, September 1888, pp. 66, 67.
33 J. H.Waggoner, “Evils of Religious Legislation” (Oakland, Calif.: Pacific Press Pub. Co., 1889), pp. 1-4.
34 J. H. Waggoner, “Decision of the Supreme Court—The Sunday Law Sustained,” Signs of the Times, Mar. 16, 1882, p. 126.
35 J. H. Waggoner, “Sunday in California,” Signs of the Times, Oct. 5, 1882, p. 456.
36 J. H. Waggoner, “Not a Politician,” Signs of the Times Special Edition, Sept. 14, 1882; J. H. Waggoner, “Hoping for More,” Signs of the Times Special Edition, Sept. 14, 1882, p. 7.
37 J. H. Waggoner, “Fate of the California Sunday Law,” Signs of the Times, Dec. 7, 1882, pp. 546, 547.
38 J. H. Waggoner, in Signs of the Times Special Edition #10, Nov. 16, 1882; J. H.. Waggoner, “The Sunday Law,” Signs of the Times, Feb. 15, 1883, p. 78.
39 Richard W. Schwarz and Floyd Greenleaf, Light Bearers (Nampa, Idaho: Pacific Press Pub. Assn., 2000), p. 243.
Article Author: Brian E. Strayer
Brian E. Strayer, Ph.D., is professor emeritus of history, Andrews University, Berrien Springs, Michigan.