“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion or the free exercise thereof …”

It is not just by chance that these profound words were chosen to be the very first words of the 1st Amendment to the Bill of Rights. The first colonists to escape to the New World were motivated by a desire to escape the rigid and mandated religious practices and domination of the Church of England.

The Protestant Reformation in the 16th Century replaced rigid Catholic Church domination of the political and religious life in Europe in areas where the reform movement took hold, but catholicism a...