Reflections on Moral Decline in America: Consulting the Founding Fathers' Views on the Roles of Church and State in Crafting the Good Society

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Examining the thought of the American founding fathers on any subject is more than just an academic exercise. It is part of the process that citizens of the United States go through in framing public policy and making law. Because of the reverence most Americans have for the nation's founders, the nation is generally committed, although sometimes excessively it would seem, to the founders' intentions. We hang on their words as if they were Scripture. We seem even to have a national commitment to capitalizing the term "Founding Fathers," so as to celebrate their near divine status. If somehow we can just implement their ideas, we think, everything will be okay. But life in America today is …