Religious Tolerance
Enlightened Founding Fathers, especially Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison and George Washington, fought for and eventually attained religious freedom for minority denominations. According to the founding fathers, the United States should be a country where peoples of all faiths could live in peace and mutual benefit. James Madison summed up this ideal in 1792 saying, "Conscience is the most sacred of all property."
Read more about this topic: American Enlightenment
Famous quotes containing the words religious and/or tolerance:
“Divorce these days is a religious vow, as if the proper offspring of marriage.”
—Tertullian (c. 150–230)
“The tradition I cherish is the ideal this country was built upon, the concept of religious pluralism, of a plethora of opinions, of tolerance and not the jihad. Religious war, pooh. The war is between those who trust us to think and those who believe we must merely be led.”
—Anna Quindlen (b. 1952)