The power of the American system of republicanism lies in its capacity to allow religious belief to be a competing, not a controlling, factor in American life.

Religious belief, like history itself, is a story that is always unfolding, always subject to inquiry and ripe for questioning. For without doubt there is no faith.

I have a very deep religious belief.

The decline and fall of the modern religious right's notion of a Christian America creates a calmer political environment and, for many believers, may help open the way for a more theologically serious religious life.

Religious belief has made me comfortable with ambiguity.

A necessary consequent of religious belief is the attaching ideas of merit to that belief, and of demerit to its absence.