CAESAR AND GOD IN CALIFORNIA
Mayer, Milton
Caesar and God in California by MILTON MAYER MAYBE it's because the Continental Shelf is so narrow—nothing more than a ledge, really. And if people get vertigo standing on ledges, you can imagine...
...It has lacked even the stature of being 'controversial' within the church...
...The American Civil Liberties Union had taken the churches' case and their lawyers, like all good lawyers, raised a dozen subsidiary points of law in case the courts did not want to decide the constitutional issue if they could avoid it...
...they never have been—would be about two per cent of the actual value...
...The reasons for NOT signing it," the Council's letter went on, "are not so obvious . . . [It] makes the presumption that the United States will always be right and any enemy always wrong...
...The oath is "obviously not a test of religious opinion...
...The Court in one of the cases wanted to know how the constitutional amendment was being enforced on the millions of tax-exemp-tees who were not required to take the oath...
...and, of these, only claimants for property tax exemption other than householders: To enforce the law on the rest of the population, it was only necessary to print the oath on the annual claim form...
...Church brings them together, and then they discover that they have mutual interests (usually begonias...
...The vote was to take the oath and forget the protest...
...215...
...What if the California legislature believed in the efficacy of prayer and concluded that First Methodist's love and prayers were supporting the enemy...
...In the San Leandro case, the court, in an oral opinion based on the "clear and present danger" doctrine, found the oath an invasion of freedom of speech and held for the church...
...what was relevant, and what alone was relevant, was that "freedom of conscience cannot exist if the state can determine what is or is not a religious belief . . . The power to proscribe opinion implies the power to prescribe it...
...What difference did it make to the churches if somebody else had to take a loyalty oath...
...Everybody just arrived, and seven are leaving for every ten who arrive...
...When several trustees threatened to resign, a larger meeting of the board voted 34 to 18 to take the oath...
...The California church case goes right to the heart of the religious freedom clause of the First Amendment...
...Nothing like this had ever come up in San Leandro, "The Friendly City," across the Bay from San Francisco...
...In the meantime, the Communists in Korea had not surrendered to the U.S...
...The California law," said the majority opinion, "is not a limitation on mere belief, but is a limitation on action— the advocacy of certain proscribed conduct...
...If we think it's a bad thing and we're going to say so, let's not take the oath...
...Thirty-some churches (or other tax-exempt groups) took the oath with a public protest...
...How could it pray for them...
...One of the older members came to Moon to say that he was "against him on this thing," but, if the church was going to have to squeeze $1,400 taxes out of a budget already strained at $39,500, well, he'd like to pay the taxes himself...
...Loyalty oaths may be required by the state as a condition of receiving a privilege from it, such as public employment and therefore, presumably, tax exemption...
...Seven of the fifteen institutions were Unitarian or Unitari-an-Universalist, five Quaker, two Methodist, and one non-denominational...
...that it was special legislation in violation of the "equal protection" clause of the Fourteenth Amendment...
...Now it is a settled matter of jurisprudence that what the state has the right to give, the state has the right to take away...
...Even the American Legion, though active, was less massively retaliatory than usual...
...President Phil Brown of the Student Coop in Berkeley said that some members were afraid that unless the Co-op took the oath they might not be able to get government jobs in the future...
...The 11,988 churches that took the oath in 1954 are still taking it rather than lose their tax exemption...
...In one of the two cases, a San Francisco judge upheld the law, maintaining the right of California to restrict free speech to whatever extent necessary to preserve itself...
...Moon had been at San Leandro Methodist less than a year, but his thousand-member congregation knew him for a "full gospel man," on social justice, on race, on temperance, on war...
...The Gracious Living Belt...
...The California Supreme Court took the five cases directly from the trial courts...
...Constitution forbids Congress to make any law respecting an establishment—or, therefore, disestablishment—of religion...
...On the whole, opponents of the church's refusal to take the oath did not want to talk...
...The last time in American history (prior to AB 923) that it was imposed on religion was the year 1866, when a Missouri statute required teachers and preachers to swear their past non-disloyalty and their past non-support of their country's enemies (i.e., the Confederacy...
...Freedom of religion does not protect a "religious" act that is inimical to the general welfare—polygamy, human sacrifice, non-vaccination, or, presumably, subversive doctrine...
...One protest began: "This democratic church...
...finger-tip control for old Mrs...
...Church in California is the place par excellence for people who haven't met people to meet other people who haven't met people...
...But we are tax exempt...
...Ye who leisure and are light laden, come unto me and I will give you still more rest...
...the congregation, in whose name the oath was taken, need never hear of it, much less discuss it...
...Last spring his Committee on Un-American Activities complained, in its annual report, of apathy in the state...
...The Communists were against it (reason enough for some people not to be...
...When the congregation of the five-year-old People's Church (Unitarian-Univer-salist) of San Fernando Valley voted, more than two-to-one, not to take the oath and to go to court, 40 of its 170 members, including several school teachers, government workers, and employees of government subcontractors (all of whom had taken a loyalty oath), resigned and established a new Unitarian fellowship...
...A woman who worked for a federal agency was openly told that she would lose her job if she didn't quit the church...
...The state argued its right to punish subversion...
...Jones, an affectionate clasp for Railroadman Smith, , retired, the iron grip for young Brown from the airplane plant, and instant recall of the names of each...
...If it had to happen, it had to happen in California...
...Supreme Court majority...
...Meanwhile, three California veterans (out of more than a million filing the annual claim for tax exemption on the first 11,000 of their property) had refused to take the oath...
...The twelve refused to render their fealty to Caesar and lost their tax exemption...
...On March 15, 1954, every church in California discovered, on getting its tax exemption claim form, that it had to swear that it was not treacherous to the state...
...The state...
...On the whole, the issue seems to have come up, belatedly, only in those few churches which have an appetite for hot potatoes...
...The trial court found against First Unitarian, on the ground that there was nothing unconstitutional in either the amendment or the law...
...The lawyers argued, inter alia, that AB 923 subverted the presumption of innocence...
...Nine months later—and four days before the justices would lose their salaries if they failed to decide the case—the Supreme Court split, in a 4 to 3 decision upholding the state...
...The committee recommended unanimously that the official board of the church refuse to take the oath...
...The State of California answered with considerable support from the current views of the U.S...
...They would simply have to pay the State of California—in the form of lost tax exemption—for the privilege...
...The constitutional amendment denied subversives any exemption from any tax...
...All response and no challenge...
...And if it wasn't discussed before the first annual filing date in 1954, it was not likely that it would be later...
...a stiff sum, but hardly confiscatory...
...A few—a very few—churchmen had fought the 1952 amendment, along with the San Francisco Chronicle and the American Civil Liberties Union...
...The expurgatory oath—in which a man uncharged with a crime is compelled to deny he committed it— is as old as the church-state struggle...
...It went on to say that the oath "seeks to make the state the conscience of the church"—and ended with the church's signature on the oath...
...Every effort to repeal the standing loyalty legislation failed, but the present president pro tern of the state senate, Democratic majority leader Hugh Burns, was unable to pass a bill to remove subversive pastors from their pulpits...
...The annual report of the First Methodist Church of Palo Alto spread its woes, in suggestive summary, on the public record: "The most intensive debate and the only marked difference of opinion arose over the loyalty oath . . . Majority and minority proposals for resolutions were submitted to the Official Board...
...Replying for the state, the city attorney of San Francisco said: "In the discretion of the assessor, I think it must necessarily be assumed that the assessor will do his duty as a public officer...
...The Council on Christian Social Progress of the American Baptist Convention said that "to grant that the State can exact an oath [from the church] is to surrender freedom [of religion] itself...
...Some of the members, who, as public employees, had already taken a loyalty oath, were embarrassed...
...The first (and largest) to act was the fighting First Unitarian of Los Angeles...
...The concatenation seemed to dampen the fires of non-disloyalty swearing even in California...
...And he wrote out his check...
...One Methodist church was debating a protest—it had already decided to sign—when the chairman of its finance committee, a tire company executive, who hadn't said anything all evening, said, "It's ridiculous to protest it and do it at the same time...
...No widespread discomfort has been experienced," Edwin Sanders of the American Friends Service Committee reported in an elaborate study of the oath and its history for the Fund for the Republic...
...Apparently it had to happen...
...and, indeed, that the church is the only place in town (except the jail) that says to the lawless, "Come as you are...
...But there were not many people against it, either...
...Missouri, it "subverted the presumption of innocence...
...Another church felt that "we must turn away from the false hope of achieving loyalty through special declarations such as this"— and made the declaration...
...The first clause of the first amendment to the U.S...
...Who's who...
...Where the issue has been raised, it has received very limited attention...
...The court thought that this putting a price tag on treason did not tend to avert a danger to the state...
...The churches had "failed to point out what tenet or doctrine of [their] faith is infringed upon...
...But the subversives, having filled the palm of the publican, would remain in business...
...The California Legislature did not meet again for two years...
...The other 11,988 took the oath promptly...
...On that day there was a weeping and gnashing of teeth in exactly twelve of the state's 12,000 churches...
...Besides the twelve resisting churches, two religious committees and one school refused to take the oath on March 15...
...And as the sheep are, so is the shepherd...
...Moon called the church finance committee together...
...One chink is tax exemption...
...What the People of California— and their lawmakers—had done was license disloyalty...
...is a lineal descendant of the congregation which landed at Plymouth in 1620...
...But who is to determine the morality or immorality of church doctrine...
...Two of them sued the state...
...that the church would still be the church if every last one of its communicants were lawless...
...that it restricted free speech in the absence of a substantial danger...
...In an earlier day there was assumed to be (in Justice Story's words in the Commentaries) "the special duty of government to foster and encourage Christianity among all the citizens and subjects...
...When a God-fearing society like ours erects a wall of separation between church and state, the wall has built-in chinks...
...to the convictions of the Christian faith as it subordinates all things, including the State, to the sovereignty of God"—and then proceeded, in terms of its own words, to subordinate the sovereignty of God to the State by taking the oath...
...This argument took place in July, 1956...
...AB 923 was designed to avoid this— to say the least—expensive procedure...
...His inelegant manner of posing the issue aroused a murmur—but not a voice -—around the room...
...AB 923 was enacted in the spring of 1953...
...the land of Dad in the tall white barbecue hat...
...Three weeks before the 1954 deadline the congregation debated the oath and voted almost ten-to-one not to take it and to fight the law in court...
...By a two-thirds majority the board agreed and decided to go to law against the state...
...A generous estimate is that not more than a hundred churches ever discussed the matter...
...But only two of the twelve were big churches, and none of them occupied a precious parcel of land...
...Certainly," said the Southern California Council of Churches a year afterward, "there was no general awareness that a vote on Proposition V was to determine whether or not the churches should be required to sign a loyalty oath...
...In the end, no action was taken," i.e., the oath was taken...
...Many felt, however, that to question it would put the church in a bad light, and that nothing should be said at all...
...The 1953 session of the legislature, carrying out the People's mandate, passed Assembly Bill 923, which required any individual or organization claiming exemption (other than the $100 householder's exemption) from property taxes to file a declaration that he "does not advocate the overthrow of the government of the United States or of the State of California by force or violence or other unlawful means nor advocate the support of a foreign government against the United States in event of hostilities...
...Of course we do not advocate the overthrow of the government so why not say so...
...But the state can not divest itself of the power to tax without divesting itself of the power to survive...
...He asked his finance committee how—if San Leandro Methodist swore that it didn't "support a foreign government in event of hostilities"—it could love its enemies...
...it is not a "derivative" issue like released time from school for religious training or public bus service for parochial school pupils...
...The complaints were (or started out to be) simple: AB 923 violated the First Amendment guarantee of freedom of religion...
...Why it went the way it did in San Leandro, nobody (including Moon) understands...
...In the other case, brought by veteran Lawrence Speiser, an ACLU attorney, the entire bench of Contra Costa County, sitting en banc, upheld the veteran on the ground that "the provisions involved here require those who advocate doctrines unacceptable to the rest of us to pay a larger tax than those who refrain from expressing such doctrine...
...But there is not much evidence that the dollar cost played a role in any church...
...The doctrine has changed...
...And, in most of those, the potato got hotter with handling and, finally, too hot to handle...
...The historic reason for church tax exemption is that the church has got to be as independent of the state as both of them can make it...
...whether any church did, would, or might advocate violent overthrow of the government was irrelevant...
...The court knew, the city attorney knew, the complaining churches knew, and every tax-exempt householder knew that noth...
...board protested that loyalty oaths "will only lead us into the atmosphere of a police state," but a minority of the board wanted the protest to read...
...There is no doubt that Justice Holmes' dictum is a good dictum: "The power to tax is not the power to destroy as long as this Court sits," but just in case the day should come when the Court doesn't sit it seems best for the state to divest itself of the power to tax the church...
...The Roman Catholics, Christian Scientists, Episcopalians, and Lutherans maintained a decent Christian quiet on the whole issue (although one local Lutheran church protested and the Episcopal Bishop of California said that the law was "a foolish law...
...The U.S...
...Much of the time the two parties appeared to be arguing two different lawsuits...
...The fact is that neither the state nor the church is disposed to debate the nature of the latter's public service because of the uneasy standoff between them...
...The twelve resisting churches had all acted earlier...
...The decision was received by the congregation with what one of the board members calls quiet amazement...
...On this view of the quo, the church might conceivably decline the quid of tax exemption on the ground that this is not its purpose...
...Some churches gave the oath the bell-book-and-candle treatment—-and then took it...
...The tax for 1954 was $6,357.68, but First Unitarian has a devoted membership of 1100 and its Religious Freedom Committee, seeking $10,000 to pay the tax and fight the case, received $13,000, much of it from other churches around the country, Unitarian and non-Unitarian...
...Nothing like this had ever come up in the 101-year history of San Leandro First Methodist...
...None of the three decisions touched the issue of freedom of religion...
...We are less than free, and less than men...
...What with state income tax exemptions, and so on, the state would have to determine the loyalty of almost every adult in California...
...that this purpose is served (if at all) only incidentally by its worship of God...
...People's Church won on the technical ground that the exemption of householders was discriminatory...
...On March 9, with six days to go, Pastor Robert Warr Moon of the First Methodist Church of San Leandro received a letter from Chairman Robert Warr Moon of the Commission on Legislation and Public Morals of the Northern California-Nevada Council of Churches...
...The California majority opinion, squarely confronting the religious freedom issue, indicates, if it does not guarantee, that the high court will decide the churches' appeal on that issue...
...Who's who...
...defending AB 923 in court a year ago, California explained that churches earn their tax exemption by "leading citizens to a more ready obedience to the laws...
...His big moment is the : high noon handshake outside the church in the sunshine...
...Very probably it was simply because the pastor is the kind of man who sees these things coming and pastors elsewhere aren't...
...Los Angeles tax attorney George T. Altman calculates that church property taxes—if they were rigidly assessed...
...Somebody mentions it once in a while in one of those churches, and in the ensuing silence you could hear a bishop's sleeve drop...
...If we're going to take it, let's keep our mouths shut...
...But 1866 is a long time ago...
...Under the new law, subversives were required to pay taxes while loyalists were exempt...
...It asks, not what belongs to the two parties, God and Caesar, but whether one belongs to the other...
...Still another church whereased that the oath was "contrary...
...And the Supreme Court has said of this clause that "it means at least this: Neither a state nor the federal government . . . can pass laws which aid one religion, aid all religions, or prefer one religion to another...
...and that a corporate oath is on its face meaningless, since no person can swear for another...
...Above all, it was the express will of the church-going People of California, who are (or were in 1952) willing to deny God in order to affirm Anti-Communism...
...An additional provision converted the declaration into an oath by making false declaration a felony...
...What is the -pro that the state gets from the churches in exchange for the quid...
...There was not sufficient support in the Board for the majority plan to carry a two-thirds vote, which had been agreed upon as necessary in this matter...
...The constitutional amendment depriving subversives of any tax exemption had been on the books more than three years...
...Some of the yea-saying churches even voted financial support to the nay-sayers—a first fine careless rapture which was not always repeated when the following years' taxes were due...
...The board reached its decision to sign the declaration only because it feared the effect on the public relations of the 'Y' and the Institute with which it is associated . . . We commend ourselves to all who read this letter as a demonstration of the erosion of freedom...
...Fourteen million people looking for a place to come from...
...The theory of AB 923 was clear: Why should the People of California provide a subvention—in the form of tax exemption—for subversion...
...The few were almost all Methodists, Unitarians, and Quakers already stigmatized (sometimes in their own communions) as troublemakers...
...A Christian should not support any group if it is wrong . . . We would be granting to the state the right to dictate what churches may believe or profess . . . The phrase 'other unlawful means' is not defined . . . The word 'hostilities' is not defined . . . Refugees from Germany have pointed out the seeming innocence of the first loyalty oaths that introduced Hitlerism...
...The Caltech Y.M.C.A...
...Not one of the 40 state senators voted against the bill, and only one of the eighty assemblymen...
...With the eloquent exception of the Chronicle, the press as a whole reported major developments cryptically, without any editorial comment whatever...
...She remained in the church—and didn't lose her job...
...A few of the protests were unambiguous, especially in young people's groups...
...ing had been done...
...A majority did oppose the loyalty oath...
...Supreme Court, which announced, late in October, that it would take the case in the present term...
...and, of these, only claimants for property tax exemption...
...Freedom of religion was not, of course, at issue...
...The Southern California-Arizona Methodist Conference adopted the fiercest of all the denominational resolutions: "The Church is not a human institution . . . The Church belongs to no class, nation, or race . . . The Church can not serve two masters . . . The Church must be free to summon all persons and institutions to repentance, including heads of government and government itself...
...The bitterly split decision—in a case involving a new amendment to a state constitution—guaranteed a hearing by the U.S...
...Here the same strong compulsion for harmony, for the closing of ranks, for the avoidance of controversy, seems to have acted to maintain resistance to the oath, once resistance was decided on, exactly as, in most of the churches where the issue arose, it operated to support submission to the oath once submission was decided on...
...But if any church has so scrupled of late, it is not on record...
...A year later the Los Angeles District of the Church of the Nazarene endorsed the law as a necessary measure to discover subversives "and to tax them for their activities...
...Any officer of the church, filling out ther tax exemption claim, could take the oath for the whole church...
...But Pastor Moon lost one of his —the local Kiwanis Club cancelled his honorary membership...
...When a state grants tax exemptions to all churches (as every state does), it would appear to be "aiding all religions," but that is what happens in a God-fearing society...
...The minority found that the law "arbitrarily assumes that those who seek tax exemption advocate overthrow of the government unless they declare otherwise . . . [The majority opinion] goes far beyond any United States Supreme Court decision in upholding legislation that restricts the client's right to speak freely...
...Who's American...
...The actual enforcement of the amendment's as-- serted intent would have been impossible...
...The letter, an "urgent message" to all 1200 member churches, called their attention to the new loyalty oath...
...On June 29, 1953, Governor Earl Warren signed it into law...
...Taxes would certainly mean sudden death for any very big "downtown" church fallen, like many such, on parlous times because of the altered character of the parish...
...The churches argued their right not to take an oath to the state...
...Therefore tax exemption can not be a right, but must be a privilege or (in the words of California) "a favor or gratuity extended by the state...
...If the pastors didn't bring up the oath issue in their churches, the chances were that nobody would...
...v Later that spring and summer, annual area conferences of the Congre-gationalists, Methodists, Jews, Presbyterians, Unitarians, and Disciples of Christ all condemned the oath...
...not one local church of any protesting denomination followed the denominational leadership (surely a compliment to parish democracy in America...
...assuring an effectively operating political system...
...The reasons FOR signing it," said the Council, "are obvious . . . It's the law of the land...
...It applied the law only to persons or organizations which had to file an annual claim for exemption (most exemptions are automatic...
...Only two new test oaths passed in 1955, none at all in 1957...
...If we do not sign, we may lose our tax exemption...
...In the landslide election of 1952 the People of California voted 2,625,571 to 1,303,401 for Proposition V. Proposition V amend-' ed the state constitution to deprive any advocate of violent overthrow ; of the government of exemption from any tax imposed in the state...
...The consolidated case was argued at length in the spring and summer of 1956...
...Who's Christian...
...The state is not supposed to spend public money—and tax exemption is a form of public spending—without getting something for it...
...that peacetime support of a foreign government "in event of hostilities" is not a statutory crime...
...Tax exemption can be withdrawn from the church when (again, according to California) the church "espouses immoral doctrine...
...The board of one large Methodist church, in the Los Angles area, voted 15 to 8 (with seven members abstaining) not to take the oath...
...Army and Senator McCarthy had...
...Tax exemption is a quid pro quo (Corpus Juris Secundum, 84:413-414, Sec...
...Once it was discovered that the oath involved the churches, there were not many people for it...
...And if people get vertigo standing on ledges, you can imagine what happens when they drive two-tone convertibles around them...
...The California church oath was, in many ways, the high water mark of McCarthyism: a self-evident fraud —a church could not guarantee the loyalty of all of its communicants if it wanted to—and just as self-evident-ly an empty pretense of enforcing an unenforceable amendment to the state constitution...
...The Frankfurter doctrine that the First Amendment does not protect speech "of low social value" against a "substantial public interest" has replaced the always moot "clear and present danger" test of Holmes...
...Nobody paid any attention to them...
...Supreme Court struck down the statute because, in Justice Field's words in Cummings vs...
...The resisting churches, Edwin Sanders wrote in his survey in 1956, "were not singled out for any prolonged unfriendly community attention, and this was of general surprise to many churches . . ." Early in 1955 the lawsuits of three churches, Los Angeles First Unitarian, San Fernando Valley People's Church, and San Leandro First Methodist (together with First Unitarian of Berkeley), began their separate ways through the California courts...
...The actual taxes ran to something like ten per cent of the non-signers' budgets...
Vol. 21 • December 1957 • No. 12
