Should a candidate be held responsible for the views of his or her pastor? If we were all held accountable for the views of our clergymen/women, then no one would ever go to church/synagogue etc. Obama shouldn’t be held responsible for all the words of Jeremiah Wright. It is, however, totally fair to ask Obama…

George Washington’s Thanksgiving Proclamation October 3, 1789 We may then unite in most humbly offering our prayers and supplications to the great Lord and Ruler of Nations, and beseech Him to pardon our national and other transgressions… Several things strike me about this proclamation (read the full text here). First, those who feel that George…

———————– Benjamin Franklin to Richard Price, October 9, 1780 “When a religion is good, I conceive it will support itself, and when it does not support itself, and God does not take care to support it, so that its professors are obliged to call for help of the civil powers, ’tis a sign, I apprehend,…

The most moving quote I came across during my research did not actually relate directly to religious freedom. It was the letter Thomas Jefferson wrote John Adams upon hearing of Abigail Adams’s death. Recall that the two men had been comrades in the revolutionary years, then bitter enemies and then friends again as old men,…

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