Freedom of Religion

Summary of the Freedom of Religion

Religion is important. It addresses many of life’s greatest and most difficult questions. For believers, religion informs many of their most fundamental values. For nonbelievers, religion is a fact of enormous importance that cannot be ignored. Religion is historically one of the greatest sources both of compassion and strife, charity and greed, good and evil. Like us, our Founders were composed of believers and nonbelievers. Most of them were learned in history. Based upon that learning and their own experience, they adopted two religion clauses which sought to guarantee an unprecedented degree of religious freedom in their own new nation—freedom that we continue to enjoy, and interpret, to this day.