the religious—right

Our Founding Fathers on religion:

"Lighthouses are more helpful than churches." — Ben Franklin, Poor Richard's Almanack, 1758

"Religious bondage shackles and debilitates the mind and unfits it for every noble enterprise, every expanded prospect." —James Madison, letter to William Bradford, April 1, 1774

"All national institutions of churches, whether Jewish, Christian or Turkish, appear to me no other than human inventions, set up to terrify and enslave mankind, and monopolize power and profit."—Thomas Paine, The Age of Reason, 1794

 "History, I believe, furnishes no example of a priest-ridden people maintaining a free civil government. This marks the lowest grade of ignorance, of which their political as well as religious leaders will always avail themselves for their own purpose." —Thomas Jefferson, letter to Alexander von Humboldt, 1813