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7. Religious Denominations and Charities
- Indiana University Press
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7 Religious Denominations and Charities In England the denomination known as the Church of England is integrated with the power of the monarchy. The King or Queen of England must belong to this denomination, and all the subjects of that country must bear the expenses of its bishops, etc. The Government extracts a heavy tax from them, whether or not they belong to that denomination, and donates it to the bishops of “The Church” and their disciples. This practice of extracting forced obeisance, in a progressive country like England, is very strange indeed.1 It is said that even the bishops and other clergymen of the Church of England who go to our country to perform ecclesiastical duties for the Government are paid fat salaries from the Treasury of India, although I do not know whether this is true.2 If it is, then that too is a marvel. In the United States, no religious denomination is integrated with the power of the people, therefore the people here accept any denomination which agrees with their own way of thinking; and the money they give for defraying the expenses of the churches,clergymen,etc.of that denomination is given voluntarily. The Government does not levy a separate tax on them on account of religion. Even so, religion is not any the less strong here than in England. In England only the Church of England gets high respect, because it is the denomination supported by the monarchy. The adherents of that denomination turn up their noses at the followers of other denominations as “dissenters” (i.e., holding different beliefs). In the free States of America no one publicly accords greater respect to one denomination than to another, because no one has heard of any particular denomination as being especially favored by those in power. There are many in England who claim that people would become irreligious if the Government did not provide for the support of religion. But this claim of the English is totally false, because in England there are 144 churches per every 100,000 people, whereas in the United States there are 181 churches for the same number of people. This disproves the claim that religious belief is less strong in the United States, where religion is not supported by the Government. In the year 1880, there were 92,000 churches in the United States, of which more than 80,000 were built by Protestants and the rest belonged to the Roman Catholics. The total movable and immovable property of all these churches amounted to $350,000,000, or more than Rs. 1,000,000,000. There are a total of 77,000 clergymen of various denominations. About a hundred and ¤fty years ago, there was strong denominational discord in this country. The Puritans of Massachusetts felt a deep hatred for the followers of other denominations. They persecuted many Quakers. They accused many women of other denominations of witchcraft and burned them alive;3 they hanged some people and imprisoned others. They whipped some like animals right in the streets, and exiled others after wresting away their property. In the year 1705 the state government of Virginia passed a resolution that whosoever denies that God is a Trinity and that the Bible is a divinely inspired book should be punished with three years’ imprisonment . And should he deny these things yet again, it should be made very dif¤cult for him to get government employment, etc. In the latter part of the eighteenth century, when the American people were trying to sever their political ties with England and become independent, they put aside their internal denominational differences and acted in unison. In the fear that their country would acquire a permanent stamp of English political power and of “The Church” if they did not act in unison at the time, they abandoned denominational differences, put up a united ¤ght against England, and became independent. For the same reason, even now these people disregard denominational differences and act in unison, and will continue to do so. It is not that there is no denominational prejudice in this country. However, because equal freedom is available to all in matters of religion, people prefer not to pay undue attention to or argue about each other’s beliefs, and they enjoy a great deal of mutual social intercourse. Therefore one would ¤nd more examples in this country than in England of people belonging to different denominations who have friendly dealings with each other...