What roles should religion play in a free society?

More and more people today would answer none.

That would not have been the answer of the founders of the United States,

the men who fought the American Revolution and wrote the country's Constitution.

To them, the issue of religion and freedom were inextricably linked.

You couldn't have freedom without religion.

In fact, the political philosophy of the founders necessitated a divine foundation.

Thomas Jefferson makes this clear in the Declaration of Independence

when he writes that all men are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights.

The purpose of government, Jefferson and his compatriots believed,

was not to bestow rights.

Rather, it was to protect those rights already endowed upon human beings by God.

But government isn't enough for free society.

A moral people is also required.

That is, a people moral enough to police itself.

Virtue or morality, George Washington observed,

is a necessary spring of popular government.

Thus, for the founders, liberty was not merely the ability to do what one wanted.

It came with moral demands and boundaries.

They all accepted the rule of life expressed by Benjamin Franklin.

Nothing brings more pain than too much pleasure.

Nothing more bondage than too much liberty.

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