Editor’s Table: A Senseless Campaign

EDITOR'S
TABLE. A SENSELESS CAMPAIGN- Just now there seems to be a general, united uprising of the religious denominations against the Latter-day Saints. The excuse for the turmoil is the election of Hon. Reed Smoot to the Senate of the United States, — not by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter- day Saints, but by the Legislature and people of the sovereign state of Utah. Every woman's organization in the country is up in arms; churches and religious societies are all vigorously united in a crusade against the Church of Christ. Petitions have come from all parts of the country to overwhelm the Senate, asking for the expulsion of Senator Smoot from that body. The whole cam- paign is generaled by a coterie of ministers. Back of the agi- tators, hiding behind them, stand these "shepherds of the flocks," dabbling in dirty politics in the name of purity, with all their might and strength. Is the campaign justified? The charges against Mr. Smoot are that he is a polygamist, and especially that he is an active officer in the church to which he belongs, and to which it is alleged he acknowl- edges allegiance superior to that which he owes to the United States government. The first charge is generally conceded to be false, even by the misled petitioners and their agitating ministerial generals. The only charge, then, is that he is a "Mormon," and, being so, the question is, whether he is prohibited from holding office under the government; whether belief in his religion is irreconcilable with American citizenship; whether he owes his church an allegiance which is in conflict with his allegiance to the government of our country.

EDITORS TABLE. 333 Happily in this country there is religious freedom, and it is well that it should be so, otherwise toleration would die; hence, that Senator Smoot is a Latter-day Saint is no disqualification. His religious belief is no more the business of the Senate or the American people, or the ministers and their adherents, than is the religious belief of Senators Dubois, McComas, Depew,
or Hoar. Personally, he is a good, conscientious, able, temperate man, quite the peer of the petitioners and their generals in moral purity and social standing: hence this does not stand in his way. His religion and personality, under these conditions, cannot act as a bar. He is a law-abiding citizen of the United States, and of the state in which he was elected — truthful, moral, upright, with no tarnish on his name. He was elected in the proper way to his honored position, and there was not the least shadow of doubt or suspicion cast on the method of his election. There was no money or other undue influence used, and no person can truthfully accuse him or the legislature which elected him, of any fraud or irregu- larity. His was among the cleanest elections, if not the cleanest elec- tion, in the whole country, held to elect men to the exalted office of Senator of the United States. His religion teaches loyalty to God, to government, and all those virtues which go to make up the personality of the senator, a belief in which is surely not irreconcilable with true American citizenship. All churches claim to be divinely appointed, and place God above country, and any man who renders true homage to God, cannot break the law, for he lives above it. No man can be a good Latter-day Saint and not be true to the best interests and general welfare of his country. After all these years, it is folly to say that the Church is antagonistic to the national government. The part which our people took in the Mexican and Spanish- American wars should be enough to eternally brand such statement false. The allegiance claimed from its members by the Church does not prevent a member from being a loyal citizen of the na- tion. It rather aids him; fidelity to the Church enables a man better to entertain patriotic allegiance to his nation and country. There is nothing required of a Latter-day Saint that can in any way be construed to militate against loyalty to the nation, and for that reason Senator Smoot is under no obligations to the Church

384 IMPROVEMENT ERA. that can come in conflict with his fealty to country.
It is plain that the campaign of the ministers is unjustified. Why, then, do they carry it on? It is to fight the Church to which Senator Smoot belongs, over his head. The fact that he holds the priesthood is gall and wormwood to them. They fight him to get an opportunity to oppose the .work of the Lord. And they antagonize the Saints because they believe in revelation, and choose to worship God in the way that Christ commanded when he estab- lished the Church upon the earth; and for the further reason that the Saints refuse to acknowledge these priests as spiritual leaders. For these reasons they combine together and seek to place the Latter-day Saints under a political ban. They are unjustified. The Church is not in politics. It did not elect Senator Smoot. Its mission is to preach the gospel of Christ; to help the needy; to do good to all men — not to control politics. The Latter- day Saints entertain individual views as to politics, to which they have a right; and are entitled to them as much as the peti- tioners are to theirs. The Saints do not vote as one party, and do not even combine politically to fight their enemies, — a course which the ministers and their congregations have not only recently pur- sued in Utah, but which they are now pursuing in seeking to stir up political frenzy in Congress and the nation, by accusing the Saints of disloyalty, treachery, and all manner of unworthiness, when the facts are that their history proves them to have been loyal, honest and worthy, in every test to which they have been subjected. Furthermore, it is a ridiculous farce to ask Congress to in- vestigate and report upon the moral condition of a church, in order to determine whether a United States Senator, against whom no wrong can be found, and who was regularly elected, is entitled to his seat in the Senate. If the laws are broken by individuals of the Church, such individuals are amenable to the laws; but what bearing their shortcomings may have upon the seating of a senator from the state in which they live, only the enemies of the Church appear to comprehend. Justice and common sense can see no related connection. It is a dangerous precedent which the agitators are seeking to establish.
If the Latter-day Saints are proscribed today, what