【正文】 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 where religion and religious values can and should speak to our mon issue of nuclear war is a pelling is a moral issue。many of them are both civil libertarians and believers, who think that families should pray more at home with their children, and attend church and synagogue more people are not sexist because they stand against abortion, and they are not murderers because they believe in free does it help anyone’s cause to shout such epithets, or to try and shout a speaker downwhich is what happened last April when was hissed and heckled at I am doubly grateful for your courtesy here this was not Harvard’s finest hour, but I am happy to say that the loudest applause from the Harvard audience came in defense of ’s right to short, I hope for an America where neither ”fundamentalist“ nor ”humanist will be a dirty word, but a fair description of the different ways in which people of good will look at life and into their own hope for an America where no president, no public official, no individual will ever be deemed a greater or lesser American because of religious doubtor religious hope for an America where the power of faith will always burn brightly, but where no modern Inquisition of any kind will ever light the fires of fear, coercion, or angry hope for an America where we can all contend freely and vigorously, but where we will treasure and guard those standards of civility which alone make this nation safe for both democracy and years ago this fall, in New York City, President Kennedy met for the last time with a Protestant atmosphere had been transformed since his earlier address during the 1960 campaign to the Houston Ministerial had spoken there to allay suspicions about his Catholicism, and to answer those who claimed that on the day of his baptism, he was somehow disqualified from being speech in Houston and then his election drove that prejudice from the center of our national , three years later, in November of 1963, he was appearing before the Protestant Council of New York City to reaffirm what he regarded as some fundamental that occasion, John Kennedy said: “The family of man is not limited to a single race or religion, to a single city, or country...the family of man is nearly 3 billion of its members are not white and most of them are not Christian.” And as President Kennedy reflected on that reality, he restated an ideal for which he had lived his lifethat “the members of this family should be at peace with one another.”That ideal shines across all the generations of our history and all the ages of our faith, carrying with it the most ancient as the Apostle Paul wrote long ago in Romans: “If it be possible, as much as it lieth in you, live peaceable with all men.” I believe it is possible。I strongly suspect that at the end of the evening some of our disagreements will I also hope that tonight and in the months and years ahead, we will always respect the right of others to differ, that we will never lose sight of our own fallibility, that we will view ourselves with a sense ofperspective and a sense of all, in the New Testament, even the Disciples had to be taught to look first to the beam in their own eyes, and only then to the mote in their neighbor’s am mindful of that am an American and a Catholic。I love my country and treasure my I do not assume that my conception of patriotism or policy is invariably correct, or that my convictions about religion should mand any greater respect than any other faith in this pluralistic believe there surely is such a thing as truth, but who among us can claim a monopoly on it? There are those who do, and their own words testify to their example, because the Moral Majority has worked with members of different denominations, one fundamentalist group has denounced for hastening the ecumenical church and for “yoking together with Roman Catholics, Mormons, and others.” I am relieved that does not regard that as a sin, and on this issue, he himself has bee the target of narrow people agree on public policy, they ought to be able to work together, even while they worship in diverse truly we are all yoked together as Americans, and the yoke is the happy one of individual freedom and mutual in saying that, we cannot and should not turn aside from a deeper and more pressing questionwhich is whether and how religion should influence generation ago, a presidential candidate had to prove his independence of undue religious influence in public life, and he had to do so partly at the insistence of evangelical Kennedy said at that time: “I believe in an America where there is no religious bloc voting of any kind.” Only twenty years later, another candidate was appealing to a[n] evangelical meeting as a religious Reagan said to 15 thousand evangelicals at the Roundtable in Dallas: “ I know that you can’t endorse want you to know I endorse you and what you are doing.”To many Americans, that pledge was a sign and a symbol of a dangerous breakdown in the separation of church and this principle, a