Religion should be kept private, period!!
Is the quote above simply your personal opinion, or is that what you believe the laws of our land call for?
Whether it is one or the other or both, I respectfully beg to differ though I don't think you are entirely wrong. I would like to offer this alternative: I think religion has both a public side and a private side to it, sort of like marriage, or even our bodies. Public religous expression in certain forms has always been part of the American way of life. Do you object to the sounds of steeple bells carried by our land's fairest breezes? On the more private side, say when it comes to the direct evangelism of another person, I certainly believe it happens most effectively in the context of some established relationship at an appropriate time, and I personally am NOT the type to stand on a street corner and ask complete strangers who are busily passing by if they want to be followers of Jesus, for example.
Our founding fatrhers were broad-minded, even liberal minded intellectuals. They were products of the Enlightenment!! I love this quote by Madison:" Religious bondage shackles and debilitates the mind" !!Granted the Puritans were religious fundamentalists, but our founding fathers were men of science and skepticsim. They make the USof A a secular project for thers to follow!!
I don't fully agree with the above quote either.
While I don't doubt that Madison said what you quoted above, I think it would be more accurate to say that the founding fathers, like the rest of us, said a lot of different things and weren't always completely consistent. One could collect plenty of quotes that would make them appear very religious... I certainly disagree that they saw the USA as a "secular project." That view is simply very hard to square with history as well as current practices...
Ben Franklin, considered by most people to be the least religious of the founding fathers, at the Constitutional Convention, called on everyone to pray and said something allong the lines of "the longer I have lived, the more I am convinced that God governs in the affairs of men, and if a sparrow cannot fall to the ground without his consent, how can we expect a vast empire to arise without his aid." Also note the reference to "our Lord" in the dating of the Constitution, before the signatures: "Done in Convention by the Unanimous Consent of the States present the Seventeenth Day of September in the Year of our Lord one thousand seven hundred and Eighty seven and of the Independence of the United States of America the Twelfth. In Witness whereof We have hereunto subscribed our Names..."
From our earliest days, the Senate and Congress and Supreme Court have begun their sessions with prayer and the legislature has employed chaplains. Many elected officials, to this day, take their oath of office by raising their right hand and placing their left on a Bible.
Consider the text to one of the other, lesser known, verses of our national anthem, The Star Spangled Banner:
"O thus be it ever, when free men shall stand between their loved homes and the war's desolation!
Blest with victr'y and peace, may the heav'n rescued land praise the Power that hath made and preserved us a nation!
Then conquer we must, when our cause it is just, and this be our motto, "In God is our trust."
And the star spangled banner in triumph shall wave o'er the land of the free and the home of the brave!"
"In God we trust" has been our national motto, and it has always appeared on our coins.
I see the United States as having an institutional separation, but not an ideological separation of church and state. Barack Obama, in a speech in 2006 made some really good points, I think, on this issue. He acknowleged that many social justice movements and changes in our laws were supported or even outright led by people of faith who had strong religous convictions. He said that people shouldn't feel they have to disregard their religous beliefs when they enter the public square and seek to influence public policy. However he challenged people whose opinions are influenced by their religion, to defend their views with secular arguements, so that people who don't share their faith can respect the viewpoint. Good advice, I believe.
