IT'S A PURITAN NATION:

Puritans and Catholics had lived together in New England - and the rest of the United States - for generations until a poet stated the obvious that was not yet obvious:  they had a lot in common.  Indeed, Puritans and Catholics had and continue to have a hand in the making of America.  Thus, some important strands of history and religion came together in one of the most powerful and still very relevant inaugural addresses ever given:

"We observe today not a victory of party but a celebration of freedom-symbolizing an end as well as a beginning-signifying renewal as well as change. For I have sworn before you and Almighty God the same solemn oath our forbears prescribed nearly a century and three-quarters ago.

The world is very different now. For man holds in his mortal hands the power to abolish all forms of human poverty and all forms of human life. And yet 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."

President Kennedy began by assuring Protestant America that he, just like all those who came before him, honored the same God and nation by swearing the same oath. He then noted how much the world had changed in 1961 because of the nuclear threat, yet simultaneously how our revolutionary beliefs were just as important as ever, including, perhaps especially, the belief that the rights of man come from the hand of God.

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