How Distrust of Unbelievers Runs Deep in American History

For The Conversation, the Danforth Center’s own Leigh E. Schmidt writes that Senator Jeff Sessions of Alabama has expressed doubts about the moral code of the non-religious throughout his career. Schmidt explains that American politicians have a history of distrusting the non-religious; John Adams said, “Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people.” Schmidt writes of Sessions, “He sees religion (especially his Protestant version of it) as having been integral to the welfare of the republic and considers secularism as corrosive of that anchoring synthesis.”

Read at The Conversation

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