THAT "ALL MEN" IS A DANG TOUGH TASKMASTER:

Independence Day gives us an opportunity to reflect on the ideological tug-of-war about religious freedom in America. The Declaration of Independence is the topic of this episode. What can we make of the references to religion and God in the text?

Our guest this week is author and academic Ira Stoll.  He's the author of the books Samuel Adams: A Life, and JFK, Conservative. He's also the managing editor of Education Next, an education policy journal published by Harvard's Kennedy School of Government.

On July 4, 1946, Kennedy -- then 29 years old, the Democratic nominee for a Massachusetts Congressional seat, and still a lieutenant in the Navy Reserve -- was the featured speaker at the City of Boston's Independence Day celebration. He spoke at Faneuil Hall, the red-brick building where long ago the colonists had gathered to protest taxes imposed by King George III and his Parliament.

Kennedy began by talking not about taxes, or about the British, or about the consent of the governed, but about religion. "The informing spirit of the American character has always been a deep religious sense. Throughout the years, down to the present, a devotion to fundamental religious principles has characterized American though and action," he said.

For anyone wondering what this had to do with Independence Day, Kennedy made the connection explicit. "Our government was founded on the essential religious idea of integrity of the individual. It was this religious sense which inspired the authors of the Declaration of Independence: 'We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights.'"

It was a theme that Kennedy would return to during the 1960 presidential campaign, when, in a speech at the Mormon Tabernacle in Salt Lake City, he described the Cold War as "a struggle for supremacy between two conflicting ideologies; freedom under God versus ruthless, Godless tyranny." And again in his inaugural address, on January 20, 1961, in Washington, D.C., when he said, "The same revolutionary beliefs for which our forebears fought are still at issue around the globe -- the belief that the rights of man come not from the generosity of the state but from the hand of God."

Whatever Kennedy's motives were as a politician for emphasizing this point, on the historical substance he had it absolutely correct. The Declaration of Independence issued from Philadelphia on July 4, 1776, included four separate references to God. In addition to the "endowed by their Creator" line mentioned by JFK in his July 4 speech, there is an opening salute to "the laws of nature's God," an appeal to "the Supreme Judge of the World," and a closing expression of "firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence."

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