John Fitzgerald Kennedy's 1960 Presidential candidate was dogged by accusations that he -- as a Roman Catholic -- would be 'report to the Vatican' and 'take his orders from the Pope.' On Sept. 12, 1960, Kennedy answered these claims in the following speech at the Rice Hotel in Houston, TX, to the Houston Ministerial Association.... Some consider it one of the greatest speeches in American history.
humanistsofhouston.org
"I believe in an America where the separation of church and state is absolute--where no Catholic prelate would tell the President (should he be Catholic) how to act, and no Protestant ministers would tell their parishioners for whom to vote--where no church or church school is granted any public funds or political preference--and where no man is denied public office merely because his religion differs from the President who might appoint him or the people who might elect him.
I believe in an America that is officially neither Catholic, Protestant, nor Jewish--where no public official either requests or accepts instruction on public policy from the Pope, the National Council of Churches or any other ecclesiastical source--where no religious body seeks to impose its will directly or indirectly on the general populace or the public acts of its officials--where religious liberty is so indivisible that an act against one church is treated as an act against all.
For while this year it may be a Catholic against whom the finger of suspicion is pointed, in other years it has been, and may someday be again, a Jew--or a Quaker--or a Unitarian--or a Baptist. It was Virginia's harassment of Baptist preachers, for example, that helped lead to Jefferson's Statute of Religious Freedom. Today, I may be the victim--but tomorrow it may be you- -until the whole fabric of our harmonious society is ripped at a time of great National peril." |
