Montgomery County sentinel. [volume] (Rockville, Md.) 1855-1974, 1928-10-19
DR.. Butler Oh Bigotry.

From letter by Nicholas Murray Butler
to Michael Williams. editor of The Com
weal.l
will take occasion to record the fact
that no one who loves his country and
who has any comprehension of the intel
lectual and spiritual foundations on which
it rests can be otherwise than deeply
moved and profoundly shocked by the
widespread exhibitions of Ignorance, in
tolerance and religious bigotry manifested
on every side.
Men and women who continue to cali
themselves Christians, at their head GREAT
companies of those who for some inscruta-
BILE reason feel they have been divinely ap-
pointed to preach the gospel of Christ. are
betrayine that Lord and Master as truly
as did Judas and denying Him as truly as
did Peter.
Men and women who with calm effrontery
continue to call themselves followers of
Thomas Jefferson and believers in his polit
ical doctrines are daily contradicting by
voice. by pen aud by deed the most funda
mental of all the principles which that
great philosopher taught.
The lesson of Roger Williams goes I'M
needed. and the fine history of the Free
State of Maryland is passed by as if it had
never existed.
Perhaps they have not even heard that
the original charter of my own university.
written a generation earlier than the Con
stitution of the United States, provides
that the powers of Its governors do not
extend to exclude any person of any rel-
gious denomination whatever from equal
liberty and advantage of education or from
any of the degrees, liberties. privileges
benefits or immunities of the said college on
account of his particular tenets in matters of
religion"
To what pass has this nation come
when millions of those who have passed
through the common schools and many of
them also through institutions of higher
education are still the willing weapons Of
a religious hate and a malice that are as
immoral as they are un-Christian and
anti-American Does all this mean that
somewhere in the not distant future another
Gibbons is preparing Notwithstanding work
on the decline and fall of Christianity
1t is the duty of every one of us, without
any regard whatever to party utilization, TO
stamp upon this invading snake with iron
heel.
This is far more important than to pro-
tect material prosperity. which happens
not to be at stake or to provide economic
relief for particular groups aud sections. or
even than to drive out of the Constitution
of the United States that enemy of civil
liberty, public morality and social order
which was forced into it eight years ago.
If the very foundation of America be
or shaken. then we and our
children shall have nothing left on which
to build.
What travesty il is on our much
Wanted progress that in this year of grace,
nineteen hundred and twenty-eight, we
should see repeating on gigantic scale
the worst practices of the Spanish inqui-
sition. of the Puritan prosecutors and of
the witch hunters, all of which we had
fondly supposed to belong to an almost
forgotten past
The foundations of America are under
attack. A vast army of straieht-thinking'
fine-feelng. broad liberal men and
women should spring to their defense in
a way that will make their complete and
permanent defense both quick and secure.
This is no time for towards. time-servers,
leealistic word splitlers or well. now's."