【正文】 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 。it will be decided by government, not by each individual。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, as vital as it is, is not a simplistic and rigid of church and state cannot mean an absolute separation between moral principles and political challenge today is to recall the origin of the principle, to define its purpose, and refine its application to the politics of the founders of our nation had long and bitter experience with the state, as both the agent and the adversary of particular religious colonial Maryland, Catholics paid a double land tax, and in Pennsylvania they had to list their names on a public rollan ominous precursor of the first Nazi laws against the Jews in turn faced discrimination in all of the thirteen original exiled Roger Williams and his congregation for contending that civil government had no right to enforce the Ten harassed Baptist teachers, and also established a religious test for public service, writing into the law that no “popish followers” could hold any during the Revolution, Catholics, Jews, and NonConformists all rallied to the cause and fought valiantly for the American monwealthfor John Winthrop’s “city upon a hill.” Afterwards, when the Constitution was ratified and then amended, the framers gave freedom for all religion, and from any established religion, the very first place in the Bill of the framers themselves professed very different faiths: Washington was an Episcopalian, Jefferson a deist, and Adams a although he had earlier opposed toleration, John Adams later contributed to the building of Catholic churches, and so did George Jefferson said his proudest achievement was not the presidency, or the writing the Declaration of Independence, but drafting the Virginia Statute of Religious stated the vision of the first Americans and the First Amendment very clearly: “The God who gave us life gave us liberty at the same time.”The separation of church and state can sometimes be frustrating for women and men of religious may be tempted to misuse government in order to impose a value which they cannot persuade others to once we succumb to that temptation, we step onto a slippery slope where everyone’s freedom is at who favor censorship should recall that one of the first books ever burned was the first English translation of the President Eisenhower warned in 1953, “Don’t join the book burners...the right to say ideas, the right to record them, and the right to have them accessible to others is unquestionedor this isn’t America.” And if that right is denied, at some future day the torch can 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。m a member in good standing.[Falwell: Somewhat] Somewhat, he is, of course, a nonpolitical speech which is probably best under the I am not a candidate for Pre