Written by ©2020 Sarah Becker Separation of Church and State “A nation’s character, like that of an individual, is elusive,” Congressional candidate John F. Kennedy [D-MA] said on July 4, 1946. “It is produced partly by the things we have done and partly by what has been done to us…It is well for us to consider our American character, for in peace, as in war, we will survive or fail according to its measure.” “The informing spirit of the American character has always been a deep religious sense,” Kennedy continued. “Our government was founded on the essential religious idea of integrity of the individual. It was this religious sense which inspired the authors of the Declaration of Independence.” “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.” “Today [America’s] religious ideas are challenged by atheism and materialism,” Kennedy then concluded. “Inspired by a deeply religious sense, this country…has always met and hurled back the challenge of those deathly philosophies of hate and despair.” “Whilst we assign ourselves a freedom to embrace, to profess and to observe the Religion which we believe to be of divine origin, we cannot deny an equal freedom to those whose minds have not yet yielded to the evidence which convinced us,” James Madison wrote in his 1785 Memorial and Remonstrance. According to a 2007 Pew Research Study “fully one in four adults under 30 (25%)…describe their religion as atheist, agnostic or ‘nothing in particular.’” The Bill of Rights, Amendment 1, as ratified in 1791: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof….” Alexandria’s St. Mary’s Catholic Church was first suggested on…