With each passing year, people of faith grow increasingly distressed by the hostility of public institutions toward religious expression. We have witnessed the steady erosion of the time-honored rights of religious Americans - both as individuals and as communities - to practice what they believe in the public square.

The zealous disdain for religion in American jurisprudence amounts to intolerance. Keith Fournier of the American Center for Law and Justice concludes that 'the ones not being tolerated are religious people who dare make any kind of religious reference or take any kind of religious posture outside the private arena.

The Republican party is not a church. It does not promulgate doctrine and then exclude those who fail to share it. But political parties must stand for something, or they will be unable to generate enthusiastic support from the volunteers needed to burn shoe leather and calories winning competitive elections.

We should resist the temptation to identify our religious convictions with the platform of a party or the platitudes of favored politicians.

People of faith find themselves marginalized and ridiculed. In a nation where our coins carry the motto, 'In God We Trust...'

Each new lawsuit seeks to expand the size of the 'religion-free zone' in the public square.

Students are not to read the Bible, jurors are not to hear it, prosecutors cannot quote from it, and teachers are not to display it.