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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 24 April 2015
Suppose for a moment that you have been wrestling with the question of religious liberty in American history and contemporary life. You begin to see that it is a multi-layered concept, not easily captured in one attempt. Suppose further, then, that you could gather together in one place some of the people who have made a significant contribution to the discussion. Who would you invite to speak? How would they respond to each other? In light of what they said, how willing would you be to re-examine your own assumptions, your most cherished conclusions?
In a dream, anything can happen. The most unlikely people may find themselves in agreement, while longtime friends may find themselves at odds with one another. Our interlocutors might be acquainted with unfolding events beyond the boundaries of their historical careers, or they might confess that their knowledge is still limited to their own historical horizon …
1. All Biblical citations are taken from the King James Version.
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This Vatican Synod declares that the human person has a right to religious freedom. This freedom means that all men are to be immune from coercion on the part of individuals or of social groups and of any human power, in such wise that in matters religious no one is to be forced to act in a manner contrary to his own beliefs. Nor is anyone to be restrained from acting accordance with his own beliefs, whether privately or publicly, whether alone or in association with others, within due limits.
The Synod further declares that the right to religious freedom has its foundation in the very dignity of the human person, as this dignity is known through the revealed Word of God and by reason itself. This right of the human person to religious freedom is to be recognized in the constitutional law whereby society is governed. Thus it is to become a civil right.
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37. Justice John Paul Stevens made this point in a rather emphatic way in a speech to the American Bar Association in 1985:
The term “founding generation” [as used by Attorney General Meese] describes a rather broad and diverse class. It includes apostles of intolerance as well as tolerance, advocates of different points of view in religion as well as politics, and great minds in Virginia and Pennsylvania as well as Massachusetts. I am not at all sure that men like James Madison, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin or the pamphleteer, Thomas Paine, would have regarded strict neutrality on the part of the Government between religion and irreligion as “bizarre.”
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