Religion and the public square

Charles Krauthammer writes in The Washington Post of the surfeit of religion in the Presidential campaigns:

This campaign is knee-deep in religion, and it's only going to get worse. I'd thought that the limits of professed public piety had already been achieved during the Republican CNN-YouTube debate when some squirrelly looking guy held up a Bible and asked, "Do you believe every word of this book?" -- and not one candidate dared reply: None of your damn business.

Do read the whole thing. As Krauthammer says, it's not as if his statement of the obvious is novel. But it is alarmingly rare to come across a straightforward and uncompromising statement of the meaning and rationale of the constitutional requirement that there be no religious test for public office. The principle has been tested and reaffirmed. The Virginia initiative of 1788 proposed amending the wording to "no other religious test shall ever be required than a belief in the one only true God, who is the rewarder of the good, and the punisher of the evil". It failed, yet its pernicious and plainly false premise that a free society requires a religious foundation - as opposed to the inviolable freedom of citizens to believe in any god or none - is with us still.