Each year, the president of the United States lights a national Christmas tree, host a Hanukaparti

at the White House, and issues of proclamation honoring Ramadan, only in America.

Indeed, America is known for religious tolerance.

In fact, it is not an exaggeration to say that America, where people of all faiths are

free to worship or not worship as they please, invented modern religious tolerance.

This tolerance, which Americans take for granted, didn't exist anywhere in the world before

America invented it.

How did this happen?

To answer that, we have to look to America's origins, which were overwhelmingly religious

and, to be precise, overwhelmingly Christian.

To put it another way, America became the religiously open nation that we know today because

it was first a Christian nation, specifically a Protestant one.

Let me explain.

Until the beginning of the 16th century, religious life in Europe was dominated by the Catholic

Church.

All religious power was concentrated in the Pope and the Catholic clergy.

They determined religious doctrine.

The power structure was top down.

All that changed in 1517, when Martin Luther, a German priest, led a revolt that came to

be known as the Protestant Reformation.

The theme of the Reformation was that people should be free to interpret the Bible and

manage their houses of worship as they saw fit a bottom-up power structure.

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