Stephen Kinzer Quotes

The First Amendment freedom of religion is as important today as when the Bill of Rights was first written.

Our Constitution recognises no other power than that of persuasion, for enforcing religious observances.

Any attempt to single out Islam would be a violation of the Constitution.

Whatever you may think of the proposed mosque and community center, lost in the heat of the debate has been a basic question: Should government attempt to deny private citizens the right to build a house of worship on private property based on their particular religion?

Congress should pass legislation to remove from the federal courts their jurisdiction to hear these outrageous challenges to the Ten Commandments and the Pledge of Allegiance.

The first amendment makes it clear that we are free to practice religion without government interference. The Constitution also establishes the separation of church and state so that the laws we live by our never guided by religious zeal.

Religious liberty should be a bipartisan issue.

I disagree strongly with the concept of separation of church and state. It was not written into the Constitution.

From a constitutional standpoint, the religion of a candidate is supposed to make no difference. Even before the founding fathers dreamed up the First Amendment, they inserted a provision in the Constitution expressly prohibiting any religious test for office.

Resist this war on God, freedom of religion and freedom of speech.

It is not classified as a pagan religion. The so-called New Age activities and this are not called religions and therefore don't come under the prohibition of mingling church and state that we have in this country.

The Constitution says that government isn't supposed to be infusing religion into our society, and so I asked to have that upheld.

Prohibiting a visible religious sign, which isn't a manifestation of militancy, would look like a fight against religions.

Religious freedom is already protected in the United States. It's in our Constitution. It's in most state constitutions.

Really, at a time when they're debating when and where a nativity scene can be used, this is the kind of stuff we need to have out there - outside of the church.

There's no religious test under the constitution. That's what it says. Period.

Religious freedom, often referred to as the first freedom, is of central import to the American experiment. As such it should feature prominently in U.S. foreign policy.

I don’t see a bit of danger from us having an established religion.

I believe in an America where the separation of Church and State is absolute—where no Catholic prelate would tell the President, should he be a Catholic, how to act, and no Protestant minister would tell his parishioners how to vote.... I believe in an America that is officially neither Catholic, Protestant or Jewish ... for while this year it may be a Catholic against whom the finger of suspicion is pointed, in other years it has been, and may someday be again, a Jew—or a Quaker—or a Unitarian—or a Baptist.

State power is no more to be used so as to handicap religions than it is to favor them.

The Government of the United States possesses no power whatever over the question of religion.

Probably at the time of the adoption of the constitution, and of the amendment to it, now under consideration [i.e., the First Amendment], the general, if not the universal sentiment in America was, that Christianity ought to receive encouragement from the state, so far as was not incompatible with the private rights of conscience, and the freedom of religious worship.

This wicked system is based on freedom of religion and belief and freedom of speech and separation of religion and politics. Democracy is heresy itself.

There shall be no establishment of any one religious sect in this State in preference to another, and no Protestant inhabitants of this State shall be denied the enjoyment of any civil right merely on account of his religious principles; but all persons professing a belief in the faith of any Protestant sect, who shall demean themselves peaceably, shall be capable of being elected to any office of profit or trust, and shall fully and freely enjoy every privilege and immunity enjoyed by other citizens

Government has no more right to help us Christians flaunt our beliefs than it has to suppress any faith.