Equality of Religious Minorities is Campaign Issue Dr. Wise Asserts

The dominant issue in the present Presidential campaign is the equality of the religious minorities, the non-Protestants in the United States, is the opinion of Dr. Stephen S. Wise, expressed in a radio address, Monday evening, when he spoke on the subject “Religious Intelerance as an American Ideal and Practice.”

Referring to a statement recently made by Senator Sanders that “this is a Protestant country and Protestants will see to it that one of their member is to be President,” Dr. Wise exclaimed this is “fundamentally if not technically, spiritually if not politically, to disfranchise every non-Protestant group of these United States.”

Speaking on anti-Catholic charges alleged to have been made during the campaign, Dr. Wise referred to the Massena incident and praised Governor Smith’s action in the matter.

“It lately fell to my lot to protest against a hideous calumny suggested rather than made against the Jews of a New York village–Massena, with regard to the practice of human sacrifice of Jews. This calumny was unequivocally withdrawn after the Governor of this State had gotten into action with the instant vigor which is uniquely his own.”

Continuing. Dr. Wise declared: “Something greater than the Presidency is at stake in this hour. American principles and American ideals are in the balance. The question before the American people in this hour is not whether one man or another should be elected President of the United States but whether minority religious groups shall be declared permanently and incurably inferior through substantive and actual violation of that article of the Constitution of these United States, Section 3 of Article VI, which reads: “No religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust under the United States.”

“I voted and I worked for the 18th Amendment to the Constitution. I believed in it then and I believe in it still. But I am not prepared to substitute the 18th Amendment for the VI Article of the Constitution. The present underground, insidious campaign against the election of a non-Protestant as President of the United States is constitutional bootlegging of the most dangerous and empoisoning kind.

“We may and apparently some of us do, recover from the intoxication which is due to 18th Amendment bootlegging. But we shall never recover from the poison which is being spread throughout the body of American life by the religio-political bootleggers, who are not poisoning the liquor of some of us but the waters of American life for all of us.”