"Religious freedom is a powerful idea--the stuff from which revolutions are sometimes made. It includes the right of individual conscience--to believe or not believe as we choose, without undue influence from government or powerful religious institutions, and to practice our beliefs free from the same constraints. It's no surprise that the first part of the First Amendment guarantees freedom of belief. The right to believe differently from the rich and powerful is a prerequisite for free speech and a free press.  Grounding our politics, journalism, and scholarship in a clear understanding of what it means and where it came from could serve as both an inoculation and an answer to the distorted, self-serving claims of the Christian Right."

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    "Religious freedom and civil rights are complementary values and legal principles necessary to sustain and advance equality for all. ..  we must not fall for the ancient tactic of allowing the kings, nobles and priests of our time to divide and set us against one another.

    We have come a long way since the revolutionaries who founded our country introduced one of the most powerfully democratic ideas in the history of the world. The struggle for religious freedom may never be complete, but it remains among our highest aspirations. And yet the kinds of forces that struggled both for and against religious freedom in the 18th Century are similar to those camps today. We are the rightful heirs of the constitutional legacy of religious freedom; the way is clear for us to find our voices and reclaim our role."

Read the whole thing here.