【正文】 be turned against any other book or any other us never forget: Today’s Moral Majority could bee tomorrow’s persecuted danger is as great now as when the founders of the nation first saw 1789, their fear was of factional strife among dozens of there are hundredsand perhaps even thousands of faithsand millions of Americans who are outside any obviously does not and cannot mean that all of them are right。but it does mean that there are areas where government cannot and should not decide what it is wrong to believe, to think, to read, and to Professor Larry Tribe, one of the nation’s leading constitutional scholars has written, “Law in a nontheocratic state cannot measure religious truth, nor can the state impose it.“ The real transgression occurs when religion wants government to tell citizens how to live uniquely personal parts of their failure of Prohibition proves the futility of such an attempt when a majority or even a substantial minority happens to questions may be inherently individual ones, or people may be sharply divided about whether they such cases, like Prohibition and abortion, the proper role of religion is to appeal to the conscience of the individual, not the coercive power of the there are other questions which are inherently public in nature, which we must decide together as a nation, and wherereligion and religious values can and should speak to our mon issue of nuclear war is a pelling is a moral issue。it will be decided by government, not by each individual。and to give any effect to the moral values of their creed, people of faith must speak directly about public Catholic bishops and the Reverend Billy Graham have every right to stand for the nuclear freeze, and has every right to stand against must be standards for the exercise of such leadership, so that the obligations of belief will not be debased into an opportunity for mere political to take a stand at all when a question is both properly public and truly moral is to stand in a long and honored of the great evangelists of the 1800s were in the forefront of the abolitionist our own time, the Reverend William Sloane Coffin challenged the morality of the war in John XXIII renewed the Gospel’s call to social Luther King, was the greatest prophet of this century, awakened our nation and its conscience to the evil of racial words have blessed our who now wishes they had been silent? Who would bid Pope John Paul [II] to quiet his voice against the oppression in Eastern Europe, the violence in Central America, or the crying needs of the landless, the hungry, and those who are tortured in so many of the dark political prisons of our time? President Kennedy, who said that “no religious body should seek to impose its will,” also urged religious leaders to state their views and give their mitment when the public debate involved ethical drawing the line between imposed will and essential witness, we keep church and state separate, and at the same time we recognize that the City of God should speak to the civic duties of men and are four tests which draw that line and define the , we must respect the integrity of religion of conscience should be careful how they deal in the word of their our own history, religion has been falsely invoked to sanction prejudiceeven slaveryto condemn labor unions and public spending for the believe that the prophecy, ”The poor you have always with you” is an indictment, not a I respectfully suggest that God has taken no position on the Department of Educationand that a balanced budget constitutional amendment is a matter of economic analysis, and not heavenly values cannot be excluded from every public issue。but not every public issue involves religious how ironic it is when those very values are denied in the name of example, we are sometimes told that it is wrong to feed the hungry, but that mission is an explicit mandate given to us in the 25th chapter of , we must respect the independent judgments of who proclaim moral and religious values can offer counsel, but they should not casually treat a position on a public issue as a test of fealty to as I disagree with the Catholic bishops on tuition tax creditswhich I opposeso other Catholics can and do disagree with the hierarchy, on the basis of honest conviction, on the question of the nuclear , the controversy about the Moral Majority arises not only from its views, but from its namewhich, in the minds of many, seems to imply that only one set of public policies is moral and only one majority can possibly be , people are and should be perplexed when the religious lobbying group Christian Voice publishes a morality index of congressional voting records, which judges the morality of senators by their attitude toward Zimbabwe and me offer another has writtenand I quote: “To stand against Israel is to stand against God.” Nowthere is no one in the Senate who has stood more firmly for Israel than I , I do not doubt the faith of those on the other error is not one of religion, but of I hope to be able to persuade them that they are wrong in terms of both America’s interest and the justice of Israel’s for conscience is most in jeopardy, and the harmony of our diverse society is most at risk, when we reestablish, directly or indirectly, a religious test for public relic of the colonial era, which is specifically prohibited in the Constitution, has reappeared in recent the last election, the Reverend James Robison warned President Reagan no to surround himself, as president before him had, “with the counsel of the ungodly.” I utterly reject any such standard for any position anywhere in public centuries ago, the victims were Catholics and the 1980s the victims could be atheists。in some other day or decade, they could be the members of the Thomas Road Baptist , in 1976 I regarded it as unworthy and unAmerican when some people said or hinted that Jimmy Carter should not be president beca