This willful deafness to religious argument, so new in our history, has had various effects. A principal one is encouragement of the already widespread view that religion doesn't have a lot to do with modern concerns - the way people live, the way they think.

... religious insults are considered acceptable even by those who decry slurs about race, ethnicity, and gender. Religious people seem to deserve such treatment.

A judge found it constitutionally intolerable that Louisiana should interject 'religious beliefs and moral judgments into teaching.'

This willful deafness to religious argument, so new in our history, has had various effects. A principal one is encouragement of the already widespread view that religion doesn't have a lot to do with modern concerns - the way people live, the way they think.

If religion and churches are truly threats to our liberties, how did those liberties survive, and in such healthy condition, all those years of classroom prayer and Bible-reading?

This notion of public-school doors being barred to God would have confounded not only the founding fathers but also those who attended American public schools as recently as the early 1960s.

The only thing better than good English writing is - I can't think of anything. You just don't pour it pureed over your potatoes. You savor it as if it were a find chardonnay. What on Earth does it matter if you stop and repeat a phrase, roll it around on your tongue, dart a few lines ahead and then suddenly come back and reread it? If the phrase is good enough, you are supposed to stop and rejoice in it.