Mark McKinnon Quotes

Nothing is more important to me, and nothing was more important to our founding fathers, than freedom of religion.

Growing up in Britain as a rather loose Jew, the two things that didn't belong together were freedom and religious intensity. In America, they do. The Founding Fathers made a bet that if you didn't force everyone to profess religion in their own particular way, you could protect intellectual freedom, and religion would flourish.

Religious freedom, often referred to as the first freedom, is of central import to the American experiment. As such it should feature prominently in U.S. foreign policy.

The new United States took the lead among the nations of the earth in the establishment of religious freedom. That is one reason America has never had any religious wars or any religious persecutions.

Religious freedom in the American sense, incorporating the separation of church and state, has been the pivotal concept of the national development of the United States of America.

This is America, and our commitment to religious freedom must be unshakeable. The principle that people of all faiths are welcome in this country, and will not be treated differently by their government, is essential to who we are.

America didn't create religious liberty. Religious liberty created America.

Religious liberty must be protected in this country. It's a principle upon which we were founded.

We have abundant reason to rejoice that in this Land the light of truth and reason has triumphed over the power of bigotry and superstition, and that every person may here worship God according to the dictates of his own heart. In this enlightened Age and in this Land of equal liberty it is our boast, that a man's religious tenets will not forfeit the protection of the Laws, nor deprive him of the right of attaining and holding the highest Offices that are known in the United States.

Religious liberty should be a bipartisan issue.

I believe in full freedom for Christians of all denominations.

The obligation of the state is to guarantee freedom of religion, and that implies dealing with all of them on an equal footing.

The tendency of the spirit of the age is strong toward religious liberty.

A free church in a free state.

Freedom of religion, as the Founding Fathers saw it, was not just the right to associate oneself with a certain denomination but the right to disassociate without penalty.

What other nations call religious toleration, we call religious rights.

Freedom arises from a multiplicity of sects, which pervades America, and which is the best and only security for religious liberty.

We stand for a free church in a free state. Neither one should control the affairs of the other. We support the First Amendment to the United States Constitution, with its "establishment" and "free exercise" clauses.

The freedom of religion and of religious conscience is at the core of democratic development.

In our Constitution, our bedrock principle, you know - indeed, what the nation was founded on - is an idea of freedom of religion: that we don't single out people because of their religion.

In Arkansas, we believe in religious freedom.

Alabama has a history of safeguarding our freedom of religion.

Freedom of religion does not entitle your religion to have a privileged position within the public sphere.

From the Founding Era onward, there was strong consensus about the centrality of religious liberty in the United States.

We are a nation built on principles of freedom, and high on the list of freedoms is freedom of religious expression.