Words To Reflect On

Senator John F Kennedy, while running for president in 1960:

“I believe in an America where the separation of church & state is absolute; where no Catholic prelate would tell the president, should he be Catholic, how to act, & no Protestant minister would tell his parishioners for whom to vote; where no church or church school is granted any public funds or political preference, & where no man is denied public office merely because his religion differs from the president who might appoint him, or the people who might elect him…. I believe in a president whose views on religion are his own private affair, neither imposed upon him by the nation, nor imposed by the nation upon him as a condition to holding that office… This year it may be a Catholic against whom the finger of suspicion is pointed; in other years it has been & may someday be again, a Jew, or a Quaker, or a Unitarian, or a Baptist. It was Virginia’s harassment of Baptist preachers, for example, that led to Jefferson’s statute of religious freedom. Today, I may be the victim, but tomorrow it may be you, until the whole fabric of our harmonious society is ripped apart at a time of great national peril.”