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Monday 25 October 2010

…America was not founded as a Christian nation precisely because America’s Founders were informed by a Jewish and Christian understanding of human nature. Since humans are autonomous moral beings created in God’s image, freedom of conscience is essential to their dignity. At least where the federal government was concerned, the Founders asserted that citizens should be subject to God and their conscience, not to the state. The Founders were not secularists. They assumed that people would bring their deepest moral motivations to political life — motivations often informed by religious belief. But they firmly rejected sectarianism. America was designed to be a nation where all faiths are welcomed, not where one faith is favored. This was and is the American genius. So does the Constitution, in Jefferson’s gloss, require the “separation of church and state”? Institutionally, yes. Theologically, yes with one notable exception. Nearly all the most important teachings of faith — doctrines on individual salvation or the destination of history — have no public role or relevance. They are compromised by contact with power. But one belief — a belief in the nature and rights of human beings — is the basis of any political philosophy, including our own. It matters greatly if “all men are created equal” or not. Michael Gerson

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