People think that, that conversion to Judaism is just a modern phenomenon. But there was an era in the late Roman Empire Judaism was not a proselytizing religion. It didn't go out looking for converts, but it accepted converts.

Once the Roman Catholic Church in the West became the church most closely connected with the state, the Roman Catholic Church did not recognize the validity of any religion other than its own.

The Roman Empire was fairly tolerant of religious choice as long as you made a point not of thumbing your nose in public at the Roman gods.

Every brand of religion maintains, and is, a permanent mechanism for transmitting ideas and values - whether one regards those values as admirable or ridiculous. Secularist organizations, with their generally looser, nonhierarchical structures, lack the power to hand down and disseminate their heritage in such a systematic way.

hope is not a plan of action.

If enough money is involved and enough people believe that two plus two equals five the media will report the story with a straight face always adding a qualifying paragraph noting that mathematicians however say that two plus two still equals four.

There could be no more powerful argument against mixing religion and government than the success of independent African American churches in placing racial segregation and discrimination on a reluctant nation's social agenda. Would black churches have been able to take the lead in the struggle had they been dependent on funds doled out for 'faith-based initiatives' . . . ?