Happy Easter and God Bless America

America is still a work in progress. From Washington's first days in office through present day Obama debate has never ceased. While Capitalism is reducing the middle class to a point of nonexistence and while the Supreme Court appears no longer so, we seem no closer to unity now than at the birth of our nation.
And perhaps that can be seen as a good thing
Freedom seems under attack from fictitious foes and real alike. The founding fathers implemented a series of checks and balances so that no one authority could run roughshod with their own agenda. With no unity in sight Washington now slogs through political mud and who can say where progress lay? In their wisdom, the founders designed that the Senate balances the house; the presidency the Congress; the judiciary the legislative and executive branches, the states the federal establishment.
And most important of all?
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of a religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.........
Of the fifty five delegates of the 1787 Constitutional Convention, 49 were Protestants with at least two Roman Catholics. Present were Congregational, Presbyterians, Lutherans and Methodists. The Constitution was sent out to the states for ratification to a mixture of English, Scotch, Irish, French, Dutch, German and Swedes. They in turn were made up of Catholics, Lutherans, Deist, Calvinists and Quakers. There was also a small yet growing Jewish community. It's important to remember that all came from lands where people were told what to believe and any dissent against the established religious authority was unlawful. And it must be remembered that the union of church and state constructed the Divine right of Kings leaving a Monarch beyond question or reproach. Government of the king; not of the people. The Divine right of kings was worldwide. Only in America, imperfect then and imperfect still, could a man believe as he wills without the fear of persecution or punishment.
I am pleased, grateful and excited that I, who will not attend church this day, can do so without fear. But for those who attend in praise of the risen Christ, I am thankful for their ability to choose and thankful for the wisdom behind the Declaration, the Constitution and the Bill of Rights.
There is no Taliban here. There exists no one favored religion. And in the light of the right's push towards creating a religious state the founders attempted to thwart that possibility as well.
As James Madison wrote, "A religious sect may regenerate into a political faction in a part of the confederacy, but the variety of sects dispersed over the entire face of it must secure the national councils against any danger from that source."
And so may our freedom continue!
Happy Easter.
Blessed Passover.