Common Honesty

An article in the Washington Post enunciates this principle very clearly. The editor is speaking of common honesty in church relationship, and makes this very pertinent and sensible comment on this principle:TOJ 144.1

“It is certainly not tyranny or persecution for the authorities of a religious body to require common honesty in the conduct of its ministers. No secular organization permits its agents to violate its rules and impair its strength.... No minister has a moral right to use the influence of his position in spreading dissension in the denomination whose commission he bears, and to whose creed he pledged fidelity as a condition precedent to his ordination. The world is wide. It has room enough for all creeds and all beliefs and their advocates. No man is compelled to belong to any church or to preach any doctrine. But an honest man, having been ordained to preach any particular doctrine, will step down and out, on his own motion, when he becomes convinced that the doctrine or creed is not true.”TOJ 144.2