[This original for this was written in September 2002, a year after the tragedy of 11 September 2001. Events of the time prompted me to write about the mixing of church and state. This version is largely the same gist, but I have looked at it with a fresh eye.]

The collective wisdom of the founders of our country created a system of government that has helped to create the strongest nation of our time. A nation that is supposedly devoted to the ideal of equality and tolerance, in spite of the personal, sometimes intense, spiritual devotion of those same founders. [continue…]