Those who drafted the Williamsburg Charter tell us that they did so in celebration of the 200th anniversary of the Bill of Rights. But it also seems to me no mere coincidence that the Charter's reaffirmation of religious liberty and re-examination of the role of religion in America's public life comes at the end of a decade that saw a mixing of politics and religion that troubled many of us deeply.

As the Charter itself emphasizes, religious people and religious ideas have long played a role in our public life. Those people and ideas are welcome elements of our ongoing national debate about what kind of a society we want to be. But during the Eighties, the debate about the role of religion in our public life often became uncivil and divisive and religious extremism often held sway over the voices of tolerance and moderation.

Early in the seventeenth century, under pressure to conform to the Established Church, an evangelical English pastor fled with his congregation to Leyden, Holland. Pastor John Robinson was the only forebear of mine who, to my knowledge, was a minister. Eventually, he would remain in Holland while others of his people sailed to the New World on the Mayflower.

Robinson's hunger for religious liberty was shared by enough of our Founding Fathers that they crafted a nation characterized by religious liberty. Thanks to the genius of the First Amendment Religious Liberty clause, the United States is today the destiny of choice for refugees fleeing religious persecution. The Williamsburg Charter has forced us to rethink some first principles which we have taken too much for granted, and others in which our thinking may have gone slightly off course. In these brief remarks, let me focus on the third guideline “for conducting public debates involving religion in a manner that is democratic and civil.”

On June 25, 1988, leaders in government, religion and business signed the Williamsburg Charter in Colonial Williamsburg. I felt privileged to be one of them.

The Williamsburg Charter is an historic document that reaffirms the first sixteen words of the Bill of Rights. “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free expression thereof.” We stand in awe of these men of Williamsburg who, more than 200 years ago, inspired these words. We salute their special genius. We admire their courage, for these sixteen words were to change, in a most remarkable way, the future course of history, both of our nation and the world.

People were to be free to pursue, without interference, those things about which they felt most deeply — those elemental questions of conscience that give meaning to life. Yet, the affirmation of religious freedom would have meant nothing without the protection of a strong, abiding sense of mutual responsibility for its preservation. We must always remember that, in the words of the Charter, “Rights are best guarded when each person and group guards for all others those rights they wish for themselves.”

The recent celebration of the national holiday of Thanksgiving prompts me to make two comments about the Williamsburg Charter. The first is that the concept of a charter document providing cohesion for a community has its roots in Puritan theology. One can make light of this connection, as a cartoonist in the New Yorker did, depicting two of the Pilgrims standing on the deck of the Arabella, one telling the other: “Religious freedom is my main reason for coming here, but when we get that settled, I'm going into real estate.” As humorous as this spoof on the hidden economic agenda of the Pilgrims might be, the commonplace image of the Pilgrims as rugged individualists overlooks the role of the covenant or communal bonding that was so central to their thought.

One of the most famous sermons of the seventeenth century, entitled “A Model of Christian Charity,” was delivered not in a church but on the deck of the ship depicted in the New Yorker cartoon. The preacher was not an ordained member of the clergy, but the civil leader of the new colony, Governor John Winthrop, who encouraged his weary fellow travelers with the words: “We must delight in each other, make other's conditions our own, rejoice together, mourn together, labor and suffer together, always having before our eyes our commission and community in the work, our community as members of the same body.”

It is my joy to address this “First Liberty Forum” here in Baltimore. As a signer of the Williamsburg Charter, I was pleased to receive your kind invitation to address the question of religious liberty from the perspective of the Catholic church in the United States.

The most effective way to proceed, I think, is to speak from a foundation of both Catholic principles about religious liberty and Catholic experience in the exercise of religious liberty within the U.S. political and legal system. My remarks, therefore, will cover three themes: first, a Catholic understanding of religious liberty; second, religious liberty and domestic policy; and third, religious liberty in international perspective.

For two centuries the American dream has flourished on the revolutionary notion that a united people can actually live with and even thrive on its deepest differences.

We are a diverse lot. This is one of our great strengths as a nation. Even with time our individual distinctiveness does not wane. We relish, enrich and continue to celebrate our diversity — our multiple heritages, the cacophony and splendor of our earlier languages and customs, our myriad ethnic and racial differences. We are Everyman. Any citizen of this world can find here a common thread of identification linking himself or herself to our society.

To provide world leadership, to prosper, even to long exist as a coherent nation, we as a people must respect and preserve this notion of living with our deepest differences. It was at the heart of our forefathers' genius in conceiving and establishing this government of the people, by the people and for the people. Nowhere is this idea more critical or central to our national well-being than in the domain of religious liberty. It was for this reason that the Williamsburg Charter Foundation came into being as a core unit in the Bicentennial celebration of our U.S. Constitution and its Bill of Rights.

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal and endowed with certain inalienable rights.” With these familiar words of the Declaration of Independence, our founding fathers set forth their vision of this country. Among those inalienable rights is the right of religious liberty.

Is this right of religious liberty self-evident? Perhaps in our country, perhaps even taken too much for granted. Most of the world, however, does not regard this truth as self-evident. There are violent conflicts in the Middle East not just between Arabs and Jews, but between Jews and fellow Jews, between Arabs and fellow Arabs, between Hindus and Sikhs in India, between Catholics and Protestants in Ireland. The self-evident character of the truth of religious liberty has certainly evaded the great masses of mankind.

Since the Williamsburg Charter deals with the role of religion in American public life, I'm reminded of a story about the clergyman who began his Sunday morning sermon by asking “O Lord, have you seen the New York Times today?”

It is almost a given that we can't understand the present unless we understand the past. Understanding religious liberty today, and its comparative absence in the past, is no exception. Since we're in Maryland, let's take a look at some of the history in this state, concerning the religious liberty we all cherish. Long before American independence, in 1649, Maryland passed its Act of Toleration. In keeping with the spirit of the time, however, toleration was granted only to Trinitarian Christians. That same law actually prescribed the death penalty for any person who denied that Jesus was the son of God or who denied the Holy Trinity. Maryland's first constitution, adopted in 1776, guaranteed the right to hold public office to all who subscribed to a “declaration of belief in the Christian religion.” In 1801, Thomas Jefferson appointed Reuben Etting, a Jew from Baltimore, to the post of United States Marshal for Maryland. Yet, at that very time, the fact that Etting was a Jew meant that he was barred under the Maryland constitution from holding any state office.

I chose to be one of the signers of the Williamsburg Charter because I hope that interest in the Charter will reinvigorate our public and private life in the United States. I hope that the Charter and the discussion it has provoked will set an example for nations grappling with the best way to balance religion and politics.

The First Amendment holds a special place in the history of United States and indeed in the history of the world. I love America because of what was created by Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, Benjamin Franklin, and George Mason and all of those clever, philosophical, tough-minded, slightly mischievous men.

They understood that America is a great experiment. They came out of a world in which changing governments meant changing one master for another — the kinds of governments that free, responsible individuals do not get very excited about. But what if, they thought, the very nature of government could change for the better. What if people could stop being subjects to masters and begin to govern themselves as neither servants nor masters. To do so, people would have to become better than they are. And so the founders of America challenged posterity with goals and standards that no society on earth had ever achieved or ever really dared to try.

Ludwig Wittgenstein, one of this century's greatest philosophers, actually recommended belief in God. Although he himself was not religious, he commended faith because he thought “it couldn't hurt.” But he was wrong. It hurts. It depends how you believe.

If my belief is opposed to yours, if my belief is exclusive, exclusionary, negating all others, then it hurts. Then it hurts not only me, but you as well. This is the very heart of the problem related to freedom of belief and freedom of conscience.

Throughout the history of the Jews, it has not been easy for my people to sustain our faith and practices. We have suffered for over 3,000 years because of our Jewishness, for believing in our God and in His truth, and in His ways. Today, fortunately, it is different, but the problem of religious freedom still exists for Jews around the world. It is because I am a Jew, a believing Jew, and because of our suffering that the Williamsburg Charter project moves me. We Jews have endured suffering because most of the people around us — Assyrians, Babylonians, Persians, Greeks, Romans, many Christians, some Muslims, all the Nazis — had less understanding than the signers of the Williamsburg Charter. This charter reminds us that what makes religious faith operative is conviction not coercion. It is for this reason that James Madison could write: “The Religion then of every man must be left to the conviction and conscience of every man; and it is the right of every man to exercise it as these may.”

Religion and politics create volatile issues in many parts of the world and have been intensely debated in America. Recent charges and counter-charges about “godless humanists” and “religious zealots” have been heated. With an election campaign underway, the subject of religion in public life remains a potential iceberg issue of 1988 — massive but submerged. On the eve of the bicentennial of the Bill of Rights, it is plain that controversies about religion in public life are as lively and potent today as when the First Amendment was being debated nearly 200 years ago.

But how do the American people view the place of religion in public life today? Is there a vital knowledge of the Constitution? Where do Americans currently draw the line between church and state? Are there significant limits to tolerance? Are there important differences between the general public and key leadership groups? Is there less religious tolerance today than 20 or 30 years ago?

To answer such questions and help assess the state of the union regarding religion and public life, the Williamsburg Charter Foundation commissioned a nationwide opinion survey. The purpose of the study was to learn how people view these issues 200 years into the American experiment. The motive was not to find out simply what the majority wants changed or restricted. After all, the Bill of Rights was written to guarantee the rights of minorities against the will of the majority.

The focus of the Williamsburg Charter Survey is a subject of abiding interest and importance, the place of religion in public life. The reality it portrays is enormously complex. To understand more fully even this preliminary review of the survey findings, it is appropriate to set the issues in a slightly wider context.

At the heart of the church-state relationship in America is the reality of pluralism. How do expressions of religious conviction remain free of state interference while its adherents press specific and often conflicting interests? The tensions this dynamic creates are as visible and as politically consequential today as they were at the drafting of the Bill of Rights two hundred years ago. Indeed, the tensions may be even greater today because of the changing face of pluralism.

The story is as complex as it is interesting. It involves many actors and many subplots but the overall pattern of change is clear. In the early years of American colonial life, New England was the center of intellectual and cultural activity where a vibrant Puritanism prevailed. The Evangelical and Calvinistic pietism of the Puritans spilled out of New England into the lower colonies with the First Great Awakening in the 1740s.

Religion in public life is a significant issue at this moment in our history for at least three reasons. First, we are celebrating the bicentennial of our Constitution, with its commitment to removing religious tests for federal public offices, and we are looking forward to the bicentennial of the Bill of Rights, which enshrines religious freedom at the head of the liberties secured in the First Amendment. Second, we are the beneficiaries of a rich literature written in the past decade exploring the phenomenon of religion in American politics. Third, 1988 was a presidential election year in which two of the candidates seeking the nominations of their respective parties have served as ministers, and in which many of the other candidates have had occasion to explore in public debate the ramifications of their deeply held beliefs for a wide range of public policy choices, both foreign and domestic.

Several other reasons could be offered in support of the view that the role of religion in public life is worthy of full and rigorous exploration in this election year. Nevertheless, this theme is likely to remain an iceberg issue submerged from public view yet moving along inexorably. More's the pity. For, as the Williamsburg Charter Survey demonstrates, beneath the tip of the iceberg is widespread misinformation and confusion about religion and public policy. For example, the survey discloses that only one-third of the respondents were even aware that religious freedom is secured in the First Amendment, although 71% were aware that this freedom is protected somewhere in the Federal Constitution. When asked what pops into their mind when they hear the words “the first amendment to the U.S. Constitution,” only 4% think of religious freedom.

This study represents a snapshot of American public opinion as we approach the bicentennial of the Bill of Rights. It therefore provides an opportunity for reflecting on the importance of the First Amendment in public life, the state of current developments and strains surrounding it, and the challenge to political candidates. Interpreted in the wider national and international context, the survey offers grounds for both optimism and concern. Four themes are salient and worthy of reflection.

After 200 years the Constitutional guarantees of freedom of conscience and provisions for ordered liberty show tremendous resilience and practical relevance for American public life. The survey provides evidence of this resilience and relevance in terms of an easily taken-for-granted aspect of the tolerance noted throughout the findings. In many countries, particularly in the Third World, there is a clear link between strong religious commitments and weak political civility. In many other countries, particularly in the developed world, there is an equally clear link between weak religious commitments and strong political civility. But a pronounced and enduring feature of American society, due largely to the First Amendment, is its combination of relatively strong religious commitments and relatively strong political civility.

Reading the results of the Williamsburg Charter Survey on Religion and Public Life gives me, a rabbi, an opportunity to assess the views of my rabbinic colleagues. While the survey did not test for general Jewish opinion, it did sample one hundred rabbis and contrast them with other religious and professional elites. Rabbinic opinion no doubt differs in degree from general Jewish opinion, but it probably does not differ in kind. We can find, I think, the opinion of many American Jews reflected in their rabbis' answers.

We know from the Gallup polls that of all American religious groups, Jews are the most secular. Their rate of belonging to religious institutions (44 percent) is lowest, as is their rate of frequency of attendance at worship services. This general picture of a highly secular and liberal community is reinforced by the current data. Particularly revealing is the similarity, in many instances, of rabbinic opinion with academic opinion, and the corresponding dissimilarity of rabbinic opinion with the answers of other clergy groups.

Growing numbers of educators throughout the United States recognize that study about religion in social studies, literature, art, and music is an essential part of a complete public school education. States and school districts are issuing new mandates and guidelines for the inclusion of teaching about religion in the curriculum. As a result, textbooks are expanding discussions of religion's role in history and culture, and many new supplementary materials concerning religion in history are being developed.

Growing numbers of people in the United States think it is important to teach about religion in the public schools. Teaching about religion includes consideration of the beliefs and practices of religions; the role of religion in history and contemporary society; and religious themes in music, art, and literature. But what is the appropriate place of religion in the public school curriculum? How does one approach such issues as textbook content, values education, creation science, and religious holidays?

The following questions and answers are designed to assist school boards as they make decisions about the curriculum, and educators as they teach about religion in ways that are constitutionally permissible, educationally sound, and sensitive to the beliefs of students and parents. There are other questions concerning religion and the schools not addressed here, including school prayer, equal access, and how schools accommodate diverse religious beliefs and practices. For a full discussion of these broader issues, please contact the sponsors of this statement.

Since 1776 the United States has grown from a nation of relatively few religious differences to one of countless religious groups. This expanding pluralism challenges the public schools to deal creatively and sensitively with students professing many religions and none.

The following questions and answers concern religious holidays and public education, a subject often marked by confusion and conflict. Teachers and school officials, as well as parents and students, should approach this discussion as an opportunity to work cooperatively for the sake of good education rather than at cross-purposes.

School districts developing guidelines about religious holidays will want to base their policies in the shared commitment of respect for individual religious beliefs expressed in the constitutional guarantee of religious liberty. This means that public schools may neither promote nor inhibit religious belief or non-belief. Drafters of such guidelines also will want to take account of the role of religion in history and culture.

Awareness of legal issues is essential in considering religion and public education, but the law does not supply answers to every question. Within the current legal framework, schools — their boards, administrators, teachers, parents and students — must make many practical decisions regarding religious holidays. This work can be done only by showing sensitivity to the needs of every student and a willingness to steer a course between the avoidance of all references to religion on one hand and the promotion of religion on the other. For further assistance and materials, contact the sponsoring organizations listed above.

We have entered into these conversations not to prove the correctness of our own traditions, but to enhance our understanding of the religious commitments of our partners in dialogue. To achieve this goal, our first task has been to listen carefully to the experiences and insights of our brothers and sisters in Abrahamic faith. We have noted frequently a commonality in our experiences, but we have not attempted to diminish the significance of real and often profound differences between us.

Through all our conversations we have grown in respect and love for one another. We acknowledge this fruit of productive dialogue as the gracious gift of God the Merciful. Having received this gift freely, we now offer to all persons of good will these reflections on religious freedom in America, with the hope that they may promote religious freedom and enhance ecumenical or interreligious dialogue.

In this statement we address the theme of religious freedom as we have experienced it in this country. We agree that it is more appropriate for us to reflect on our own experience of religious freedom in the context of the American constitutional order. This is not because we seek to avoid a difficult question for interfaith dialogue. On the contrary, we are fully aware that the topic we have chosen may be controversial. Our efforts to reach common accord on these matters reflect our dedication to the principle that we advance mutual under standing of one another by exploring difficult questions with frankness and openness, and by learning from our partners in dialogue.

For two hundred years, General Assemblies of the Presbyterian Church have been concerned with religious liberty and the relationship of church and state. The first General Assembly might well have heard the echo of Hanover Presbytery's mighty Memorial to the Virginia legislature: “We ask no ecclesiastical establishments for ourselves; neither can we approve of them when granted to others.” Since 1788, our basic Principles of Church Order have placed in the first position the powerful commitment of our Reformed faith to religious liberty: “God alone is Lord of the conscience. … We do not even wish to see any religious constitution aided by the civil power, further than may be necessary for protection and security, and at the same time be equal and common to all others.”

The Bill of Rights in the Constitution of our civil order also accords the first position to this same commitment: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof. …” These clauses have been remarkably successful in guaranteeing religious liberty and assuring religious peace in a nation of extraordinary religious vitality and pluralism. As we deal with the difficult and controversial issues of religious liberty, we must not lose sight of its many aspects that are not controversial. Freedom of religious belief is unquestioned in this country. The right to basic religious observance is unquestioned. It is unthinkable that civil and political rights might be conditioned on adherence to a particular religious faith. In many countries of the world, none of these things are true.