Thomas Jefferson asked the question, "Can the liberties of a nation be sure when we remove their only firm basis, a conviction in the minds of the people that these liberties are the gift of God?"

John Adams put it this way: "We have no government armed with power capable of contending with human passions unbridled by morality and religion. Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other."

In Volume 1 of Democracy in America, Alexis de Tocqueville observed that "... liberty cannot be established without morality, nor morality without faith."

Will and Ariel Durant, in their classic book, "The Lessons of History," asked themselves this question: "Does history warrant the conclusion that religion is necessary to morality -- that a natural ethic is too weak to withstand the savagery that lurks under civilization and emerges in our dreams, crimes and wars?"

This was their answer: "There is no significant example in history, before our time, of a society successfully maintaining moral life without the aid of religion."

If religious principles are so fundamentally a part of our heritage, why are they under such violent attack?