Religious Toleration (John Locke's civil society)
Some historical background on John Locke, a devout Christian who proposed the separation of church and state, can be found here:
http://plato.stanford.edu/en
tries/locke/#LocRelTol
Locke's Letter on Religious Toleration can be read at http://www.constitution.org/jl/tolerati.htm
A very informative article on Deism and the Founders, published in the Virginia Quarterly Review, can be read online at
http://www.vqronline.org/articles/2003/autumn/holmes-religion-james-monroe/
1 comment:
John Locke proposed the separation of the INSTITUTIONS of the church and of the state. But such a separation does not make us a "secular nation" ("secular nation" meaning: God's laws are not recognized in this society, and Christians are not allowed to express their beliefs on touchy issues in public). We "Christian nation" people are not advocating that Christianity ought to be the ENFORCED religion, but rather the recognized backbone of our Constitution and society. I'll write on this extensively later on my Foundation Forum blog in the near future.
It's great that so many more Americans are beginning to become more interested in our Founding Era than we have been in the last 50 years!
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