The American experience of the relationship of modern democracy and religion is a very large topic, no doubt too large. But it is an important one, even an urgent one and therefore unavoidable. Its importance is at least two-fold. First, it is central to an understanding of America, for the people of America have been and remain religious. In addition, they bring their religious convictions to bear on public affairs. Religious groups and institutions constitute a component of America’s version of democratic politics. Second, this topic is also central both to an understanding of modern politics as such and to the theme of this series of lectures -- politics, morality and citizenship. In both regards, this topic has become urgent as a result of the events of September 11, 2001 that have raised the question of religion and democracy in a dramatic but different form.

By saying that the understanding of this subject might be central to an understanding of modern politics as such, I do not mean that modern political life and the American experience are identical. They are not, and happily so for Americans. America has escaped many of the most unpleasant consequences of modern political life, above all modern tyranny. But America represents the most successful form of modern political life if one is to judge, as one inevitably must, by the crude but unavoidable standards of political and military power, economic prosperity and technological progress. This much, at a minimum is the conclusion on must draw from the end of the Cold War and the victory of the Western Alliance of which America was a part. American may even appear to be the most successful polity in history. Of course the question that this poses is how did the United States come to be so successful in modern terms? In this context, one of the inevitable subjects is the role of religion in American democracy. For alone among the advanced modern democracies, America has been and remains a religious country. Its religiosity is as unique as its success.

Roughly speaking, this is the warrant for my subject as well as a rough indication of how I mean to address it. I will first try to provide a sketch of religion in American democratic life then pose the problems of understanding it raises. For the conjunction of the two -- religion and modern democracy -- present a puzzle and even a paradox. Inevitably I will also have to return to the events of 9/11.

However, before turning to these subjects, I want to correct a possible misunderstanding in the remarks I just made. Like other Americans I am inclined to praise my country and take satisfaction from its success and I just did. This virtue -- and it is one -- can also entail a vice if one ignores the contributions of others to that success. No doubt we Americans, including me, suffer from that vice to some degree. The cause, I believe, is less simple arrogance than the fact that we are remarkably ahistorical. As a rule, we know little to nothing about our own country’s history and our own founders and other statesmen let alone other countries and their history or statesmen. If we lack gratitude to others including other Americans it is at least in part a function of our ignorance. As a result we are less aware then we ought to be of the degree to which we owe our present success to others, especially Great Britain. I refer in particular to its great efforts in the spring and summer of 1940, and to Winston Churchill, the man who led Great Britain in that hour. Without that leadership and effort, America’s present success would be absolutely impossible. We would probably be discussing the characteristics of Fascism or perhaps mature Fascism. It is doubtful that as a Jew I personally could be a participant in this discussion. I also refer to the support that this country gave to American policy in the 1980’s and early 1990’s which led to victory in the Cold War and then to victory in the Gulf War. Without that support we might well be having a different discussion, one whose subject was the qualities of mature Communism, as the leading if not ubiquitous form of modern politics. Happily we are not and for the support that made this possible America should be, and sometimes is, grateful. This whole subject obviously deserves more discussion and perhaps we will return to it later. For the present, I only want to say that it may be some consolation to know that in recent years a significant number of Americans have become more interested in history, serious history.

Let me turn now to the central role of religion in American democracy. Of that role there is much proof and evidence, past and present. But I will start with illustrations from the present. For the present, in the form of the events of 9/11, weighs heavily upon us and, as I have suggested, raises the question of religion and democracy in a number of ways, both direct and indirect.

One illustration is provided by a meeting President George W. Bush held with the Congressional leadership shortly after the attack. According to one account of this meeting, near its end, Senator Robert Byrd, who is the president pro tempore of the Senate, made some remarks. He first referred to the American Constitution and the authority of the Congress under it and pulled a copy of it from his pocket. His point was to serve notice to the President that he could not simply expect the Congress to write him a blank check as he prosecuted the war. But he went on to describe a dinner he had had with the President. Byrd mentioned that he was impressed by the fact that Bush had said grace before dinner, noting that Bush had done so matter-of-factly as part of his usual custom. Byrd then reported that the President had continued in a pious vein by referring to Hollywood’s negative influence on American culture, in particular its encouragement of materialism and permissiveness. (Bush now refers to this as the culture of "if it feels good, do it.") Byrd responded both to that earlier conversation and the recent events by saying, "I’m praying for you. Despite Hollywood and TV there’s an army of people who believe in divine guidance and the creator. You stand there," he continued, "Mighty forces will come to your aid." For Byrd as for many Americans, including the President, there are two sacred documents, the United States Constitution and the Bible.

A second example is our national anthem, or, rather, our new quasi-official national anthem. The official national anthem is the song entitled the Star Spangled Banner. One might expect to be hearing it a great deal since 9/11 for a number of reasons. One is the fact that it was written during the last time and the only other time, Washington, the American capital, was attacked by an overseas enemy. It is about that attack, or, more precisely, it is about an attack on the city of Baltimore which followed the attack on Washington. The attack on Baltimore was successfully repulsed, ultimately saving Washington itself, and this is celebrated by the anthem. This occurred in the late unpleasantness known as the War of 1812, about which the less said the better. Now the Star Spangled Banner continues to be sung at most official functions. But it is generally joined with the singing of the hymn entitled God Bless America. In other circumstances it has largely been displaced by this hymn. This practice was inaugurated at the conclusion of the gathering of the Congress designed to reassure the nation after the attack. It has become pretty much ubiquitous since.

A final example is provided by President Bush’s recent appearance at an annual event called the National Prayer Breakfast, which just celebrated its 50th anniversary. This is a remarkable institution in its own right and is usually addressed by the President as well as other elected officials and of course, distinguished clergymen. Indeed, during the last administration President Bill Clinton used it as the occasion to provide a public confession of sin as a means of addressing the scandal in which he was then embroiled and in the hope of staving off impeachment. (It served as the basis for a new book on political theology written by Clinton’s own pastor. But that is another story.) On the most recent occasion President Bush addressed the group by saying "since we met last year, millions of Americans have been led to prayer. They have prayed for comfort in a time of grief, for understanding in a time of anger, for protection in a time of uncertainty. Many, including me, have been on bended knee. The prayers of this nation are a part of the good that has come from the evil of September 11th, more good than we could ever have predicted." Bush went on to say that "Faith gives the assurance that our lives and our history have a moral design." "The promise of faith is not the absence of suffering -- it is the promise of grace."

Most Americans would have understood what Bush was saying whatever their particular reaction might have been. All this is to say, America or American society not only has been religious but remains so and the importance of that has been plain since 9/11.

To fill in the rough outlines of this portrait one must add that the American public does not see the present war as a religious war, notwithstanding the fact that America was ostensibly attacked in the name of a religion. In this the public has followed the lead of the President. At that same prayer breakfast Bush said, "Every religion is welcome in our own country, all are practiced here. Many of our good citizens profess no religion at all. Our country has never had an official faith... [But he went on] Faith teaches humility and with it tolerance. Once we have recognized God’s image in ourselves, we must recognize it in every human being. Respect for the dignity of others can be found outside of religion, just as intolerance is sometimes found within it. Yet for millions of Americans, tolerance is a command of faith. When our country was attacked, Americans did not respond with bigotry."

The President was right. Americans, especially Americans of faith, did not respond with bigotry. In part this was because they genuinely share the view he expressed. He really was speaking for the nation as well as himself. But in part it was because Bush did undertake to speak for the nation out of his faith in the days following 9/11. He went out of his way to say, and rightly so, that America is at war with terrorism and not with Islam. He attempted to forestall any mistreatment of American Muslims and succeeded except for a tiny number of incidents in the first 48 hours after the attack. Today most Christian Americans do not blame Islam for the present war. Nor do they blame Jews who for different reasons might have attracted their political and religious anger. To the extent that the American public does see this as a religious war, it follows the president in seeing it as a war waged against religion -- all religions, including Islam, Christianity and Judaism -- by murderous, irreligious things.

President Bush will persist in trying to keep this a war on terrorists or on states that harbor them and not on Islam. Hopefully he will succeed. His success does not entirely turn on his good intentions. We can only avoid a war on Islam if Islam does not declare a war on us. This is of course not entirely within his control, as was pointed out by a British Muslim cleric who reproved the President for expressing views on what Islam did and did not teach. Nevertheless, there is reason to hope that we will avoid having a war with Islam. One such reason is the recent success of American and also British arms. Another is the potential for new developments within the Muslim world, which I follow as a long-time student and sometime professor of Islamic history and thought. But that is another subject.

Perhaps the portrait I just offered is not the best for considering the role of religion in American political life. It has been said that there are no atheists in foxholes. It is perhaps not surprising that Americans are now especially under the influence of religious feeling and sentiment. They are at war. But that is not of course their normal condition. What did they look like in peace? What was the state of affairs prior to 9/11?

Let me refer to the most important recent political event prior to 9/11 -- the election campaign of 2000. Here the evidence is equally, if not more, striking. To put it most simply, it was the most religious American election campaign, both in rhetoric and substance, in my lifetime and probably in living memory simply. According to some historians, its best precedent was the campaign of 1864, conducted in the midst of the American Civil War. But the 2000 campaign was conducted in an error of unparalleled peace and prosperity made possible by the victory of America and the Western Alliance in the Cold War. The remarkably religious character of the campaign was a result of the fact that both parties and their leading candidates introduced religion into it. It entered the very heart of the campaign in two ways.

The first way religion entered the campaign was the manner in which the candidates presented themselves. In it three of the four final candidates for national office -- Governor Bush, Vice-President Gore, and Senator Joseph Lieberman -- were quite outspoken about their religious affiliations and the fact that their religion had an important role in their approach to public life. This began during the primary season. For example, Governor Bush declared in an early debate that he regarded Jesus as the greatest political philosopher. Vice-president Gore, for his part, spoke of the fact that the remaining motto of his denomination was "What Would Jesus Do?" and declared that this question guided his thoughts about public life and service. Finally, of course, there was Senator Lieberman who was selected to join the Democratic ticket not despite the fact that he was an observant Jew but because of it. His selection managed to rescue the ticket from the free-fall decline that it had been in and made the race competitive down to and beyond the finish line. Senator Lieberman, who was already famous for advocating a large role for religion in public life, continued in that vein.

The second way religion entered the campaign was the fact that both campaigns embraced a public role for religion, particularly with regard to the solution of social problems. Indeed it was the only thing on which the two campaigns agreed. Both endorsed versions of so-called faith-based initiatives as appropriate and necessary government policy.

True, both these religious aspects of the campaign, the personal and the substantive, were not altogether free of controversy. Some thought that it was inappropriate for candidates to speak so freely of their faith. But this objection more or less collapsed with the selection of Senator Lieberman. It is also true that once the campaign was over, controversy reemerged. President Bush announced his faith-based initiative as almost his first undertaking and it came quickly to be understood as his signature issue. Critics raised the specter of intra-religious American warfare as the potential outcome of government grants to religious charities. But this was largely customary partisan politics. Since 9/11 this controversy has faded into the more religious tones I have described.

All this is to say that even prior to 9/11, religion was playing a very powerful role in American political life. More importantly, it appeared to be on the rise rather than in decline. Though this caused alarm in certain quarters, it could not and was not considered even by its critics as simply outside the mainstream of American political life. The question was not whether religion belongs with democratic public life in America, but simply how much is appropriate and of what kind.

For Americans, it seems natural that religion and democracy go together and has more or less seemed so from the beginning. At least some of America’s founders encouraged that view and left behind statements expressing the hope that religion would retain a major role in American society. The most famous and important was provided by George Washington who was, of course, America’s first president and the man who did more than any other both to establish the American republic and to preserve it in its infancy from forces which might have destroyed it. Washington’s statement on the subject of religion and public life (as almost all other important topics of American politics) is to be found in his Farewell Address. In it he told the American people of his decision not to run for a third term and offered his advice for their future prosperity.

Washington’s remarks on the subject of religion form one lengthy paragraph. It is worth recalling because it reflects the common view of many Americans down to the present day, including the remarks of President Bush that I cited earlier.

Not everyone today would agree with Washington’s words; indeed, not everyone did then. But for a large number of Americans, they do capture the essence of their view of the religious requirements of democracy. They see the conjunction of religion and democracy as natural and even necessary -- necessary at least for democracy’s greatest success. They can and do appeal to the authority of Washington. But just as importantly they can point to the record of American success and attribute it in part to the continued vitality of religion in America.

Among the reasons now advance to support this view, one concerns what Washington referred to as the "influence of refined education on minds of peculiar structure." Washington, of course, had in mind the education available through what is known as the modern enlightenment and its provision of a rational morality. He expressed a strong doubt that such a morality was, or could be, sufficiently powerful for the public purposes of "popular government," that is government of a genuinely popular character, based on individual rights and taking the form of more or less unrestrained democratic politics.

For many Americans, Washington’s strong doubt is still stronger today. Whatever might have been the force of modern enlightenment thinking, that body of thought has now yielded to post-modern enlightenment, including moral relativism, deconstruction and the collapse of the notion of reason as a standard for moral action. Today’s "minds of peculiar structure" have most peculiar ideas, ones that no longer proved support for the political principles of America’s founding let alone moral principle in a broader sense. As a result, many Americans are inclined to look to religion as the source of both their political and moral principles and are grateful that religion still has sufficient vitality in America to serve this way. For them, religion is not only compatible with American democracy but crucial to it in both the past and the future.

This is not the way the situation appears to non-Americans, however. They are frequently puzzled and sometimes appalled by American religiosity, though not a few take a certain pleasure in the repulsion. Their puzzlement reflects the view that religion and modern democracy do not go together or at least do not go together well. This is not altogether surprising. America does present a puzzle. I would go so far as to say that it presents a paradox in its particular mixture of religion and democracy. How may one understand it?

One could handle the problem by saying that American practice represents no more than its peculiar tradition. But this is not adequate. It is not adequate in the first place precisely because tradition has a peculiar or weak meaning in America. (After all in America it is possible to hear today of something as being a tradition since 2001.) So let me try to state the difficulties more concretely and address them. Let me begin with this very difficulty -- the problem of tradition.

One is tempted to call this problem chronological. On the one hand America presents a nearly whole-hearted embrace of modernity, of modern principles, modern institutions and modern ways in all areas of life -- political, economic and social. On the other hand, the vitality of religion, particularly traditional religion means, at least in part, the embrace of pre-modern principles, institutions and ways. This is especially captured by the fact that for a great many Americans religion means attachment to the Bible, a very old book.

These two elements of American life are not simply chronologically disparate; they appear to be, and in some senses genuinely are contradictory. Indeed, chronology in the American context implies a contradiction. For according to authoritative statements, those of the American founders, the establishment of the American republic entailed not only the founding of a new country but the establishment of a new order as well, one described by the founders themselves as a New Order of the Ages. America was meant to establish a new future that necessarily involved some kind of break with the past. And, of course, America did. Moreover, this orientation towards the future, or the new, has not diminished, even now that the future has arrived. This became ever more salient in the 1990’s. During that period, it was always time to "move on," as we say in America. The slogan of that era, in which we still live, might have been borrowed from the slogan of Microsoft -- Where do you want to go today? What does this spirit, the spirit of the future, have to do with the spirit of religion or more precisely traditional religion, which by virtue of being traditional necessarily looks to the past? In fact, it cannot merely look to the past but must also esteem it or privilege it, as we say today.

Of course, this is not the only way to describe the tension between America’s modern and ancient elements. Modern life takes human freedom as its starting point, especially in America; by contrast traditional religion apparently puts the emphasis on human duty, first to God and then to one’s fellowmen. Thus the American experience of religion and democracy presents what is fairly called a paradox.

This is not the only paradox presented by America. By a strict reading of modern political thought, at least that political thought which was most influential in the founding of America and which explains a very great deal of American character, the individualism of America should be incompatible with patriotism or at least make it very difficult to flourish. But in fact this has not been the case as we learned once again on September 11th, 2001.

This raises fundamental questions: Is the paradoxical character of America merely coincidental or accidental and unrelated to its progress (or success) in the world? Or has this paradox been a fruitful one and, if so, why? Or is it inimical to American success? Has America been successful in spite of this paradox and the burden or obstacle it presents? Since America’s success is measured in essentially modern terms all these questions tend to boil down to the following: Has the unusually religious character of America and in particular its attachment to Biblical tradition been a help or a hindrance? I will try to address these questions insofar as they bear on the relationship of religion and democracy.

These are of course not new questions and so of course I will be treading where others have gone before. In particular, I follow in the footsteps of Alexis de Tocqueville who visited America in the 1830’s, some 60 years after it declared its independence and nearly 50 years after it adopted its Constitution and federal system, under which Americans still govern themselves. This afforded Tocqueville a vantage point from which he could observe a fair portion of the lived experience of American democracy. Tocqueville was very interested in -- even absorbed -- by the fact that Americans were so religious precisely because of the fact that America represented the first expression of the modern democratic movement. He declared that the first thing that struck and surprised him was the vitality of American religion. He set out to capture this aspect of America and explain it. As in so many respects, it is very hard to improve on his understanding of America.

The only advantage I can confidently claim is the benefit of a longer experience of America by virtue of the era in which I live. That experience offers continuing testimony to the vitality of religion in American democratic life. The most recent experience, by which I mean America’s victory in the Cold War and its aftermath, also affirms it. But it does more than that precisely because of that victory. Indeed, the continued force of religion in America in the wake of that momentous event poses the question about religion and American democracy more starkly than ever before for a variety of reasons. The question is not differently framed in our times than in Tocqueville’s, but it is undergirded by aspects of modern life, some wonderful and some horrendous, which Tocqueville could only imagine.

Above all, Tocqueville did not know just what the fate of the modern, democratic revolution in world affairs would be. He was well aware of the fact that this revolution could take a variety of forms, some good and some monstrous. The good included the American experiment in representative government whose success he appreciated despite its defects. One great purpose of his book about American democracy was to defend the democratic movement against its European critics by presenting America’s virtues and analyzing their causes. He had a great need to do so especially in France, whose democratic experience had been largely defined first by Robespierre and the Terror and thereafter by Bonaparte. More generally, he was concerned that the democratic movement could easily lead to a new form of tyranny, democratic tyranny, and was perhaps even likely to do so, even in America. Such an outcome would entail a betrayal of those modern hopes grounded in an appreciation of human liberty.

Those living today have had a full measure -- more than a full measure -- of the experience of that possibility through many things, but above all those two evil twins, Fascism and Communism. Naturally, Tocqueville lacked the experience of their horrendous depredations. But even more importantly he lacked the experience and therefore the conviction that these evil possibilities that arose from some of the same modern sources as American liberal democracy and would eventually be defeated by that kind of democracy.

We know, of course, otherwise. We know that liberal democracy has won what proved to be a 200+ year competition among competing forms of modern political life. For that is what the end of the Cold War and America’s victory essentially means. It also means that the story of modern political life can and does have a benign and even happy ending. Without that victory or rather with its opposite, the defeat of America and the West generally, modern political life and modern life generally would have appeared to be a misfortune.

In conjunction with the conclusion that American success indicates modern hopes, one must observe that America remains religious. It is that which poses the paradox most starkly and more starkly than in Tocqueville’s day. Although this vantage point underscores the problem, it also points us in the direction of a solution. For it allows one to focus on one enormous fact -- alone among all modern revolutions, it is the American Revolution that succeeded. It allows one to make a comparison, a final comparison, among the different modern revolutions and to examine their differences in the light of their failures or successes. What was the difference between the American Revolution and all its rivals and what was the cause of that difference? There are many ways to describe that difference. But there was one in particular that informed America’s rivals and in particular the notion that they were superior in their democratic prospects. A consideration of this view leads one back sooner or later to the question of religion.

The essence of that view or rather criticism was that the American Revolution was too limited and moderate in its goals. It did not see politics as the vehicle for embracing and transforming every aspect of life. It did not embrace politics with the ambition to be total, or as we might now say, totalitarian. It was too modest especially from the perspective of the essence of modern democratic principles. On the basis of those principles the people claimed a right to be everything and to define everything. There was more or less nothing that could raise and exercise a claim against the people. This was not only just but would lead to the greatest possible political power. For the people taken as a whole represented the greatest possible political power. Hence it was not only just but was bound to succeed. The only issue was to give full and proper expression to the rights and the power of the people. On this, the French, Fascist and Communist revolutionaries could and did disagree.

But on another point they did agree -- the American view of democratic principles was too modest, incoherent and weak. It would inevitably be overcome by a purer and more powerful system of democratic right. There was great force to this critique. For a long time it seemed likely that history would vindicate it. But we now know differently. If American expectations were modest, the expectations of its rivals proved to be unreasonable as well as unnatural. Because they were unnatural, they were necessarily accompanied by great violence and produced horrors never before experienced by men. But as important, is the fact that all these revolutions failed in the coin of modern life -- success.

What explains this difference and outcome? It is tempting to think that Americans are somehow simply moderate, something in our bones or the food we eat or the air we breathe. The American Revolution just had to be moderate. There are some Americans who subscribe to this view. But it is not adequate. America’s modern critics were correct at least in one respect. Moderation is not a modern virtue and it is especially not a democratic one. Yet Americans are as democratic as the next modern man. In fact they are typically far more democratic. They are often rude and vulgar. Americans are often disliked precisely because they are so democratic.

Americans should have been equally tempted by more immoderate politics. How was it that they were not? Well, as a matter of fact, they were. They were especially so at the beginning. This emerges if one looks closely at the first 12 years of the republic. The sign of that temptation was the enthusiasm many Americans felt for the French Revolution. This enthusiasm affected not only many ordinary citizens but also some of its most famous statesmen, Thomas Jefferson and James Monroe for example. It even affected James Madison, the creator of the Constitution, which is thought to be the very model of restraint and moderation, at least in its aims and effects. These three men served as President in succession from 1800-1824.

Yet in the end America did not succumb to the tempting vision of unrestrained democratic politics and these men themselves lost their enthusiasm for it. So one is in need of some explanation other than "native" American moderation to explain the survival and success of American democracy. Let me suggest two. The first was the extraordinary good fortune of having excellent statesmen at a most important hour -- the infancy of the American republic. I have particularly in mind our first two presidents -- George Washington and John Adams. The more closely one examines the earliest political history of the American republic the more it appears that without the policy and leadership of these two men, including their subordination of ambition to the common good of the republic, it was possible and even likely that the American republic experiment would have failed. It would have failed as miserably as most republics of the past and as most modern republican experiments have failed. One must add, of course, that at a later and equally critical hour, America was blessed once again with a great statesmen, in the person of Abraham Lincoln.

What explains the presence of such great statesmen? Luck is not exactly an explanation. This has led some Americans to consider the American experience as providential. But I speak tonight not as a theologian but as a political scientist. So I must turn to another cause of American political moderation that curiously enough consists in the vitality of American religion.

This will seem curious since the modern political objections to religion consisted of the complaint that religion led to immoderation in politics or more bluntly, to fanaticism, the very bane of stable and healthy political life of whatever variety. For this view, there was a great deal of evidence in the European religious wars of the 16th and 17th centuries. However, this complaint has lost some of its source in the light of the experience of all modern democratic revolutions other than the American. For although all of them rejected religion or at least traditional religion, all of them were deeply entangled with and flawed by fanaticism. Indeed, their fanaticism led to consequences as horrible if not worse than the consequences of the religious politics they explicitly sough to replace. This was put in sharp relief during the final stage of the modern political competition, whose principal actors were Soviet Communism and Western and American liberal democracy. For the former was, of course, explicitly atheistic and had the ambition to establish atheism as the basis of modern politics as such.

In light of all these experiences, let me suggest the following concerning the role of religion in American democracy. In America, at least, religion has exercised a moderating influence on the totalitarian tendencies and impulses of the modern democratic revolution. It has done so by denying in principle and practice the claim that politics could or should embrace the whole of human life. It has presented the claim that there is a larger whole to which human life belongs and to which it must find recourse, if only now and again, if not every Sabbath than at least some. As President Bush said to the clergy assembled at the National Prayer Breakfast, "You’ve reminded generations of leaders of a purpose and a power greater than their own."

But while religion has affected a certain kind of moderation by proposing a limit to politics, in America it has also somehow learned a moderation of its own. In part this may be attributed to the constraints of the American political system. These prevented religion from succumbing to the temptation to exercise the claim to "a purpose and a power greater" than politics within politics. But it is also the result of a process of reflection within religion which amounted to a kind of self-education in moderation. In this process, it had the assistance of a number of very thoughtful political and religious thinkers.

Down to the present time, America has somehow induced this education in every significant religious group to be found within its borders -- including Catholics, the many varieties of Protestants, and American Jews. In doing so, it has fulfilled a vision laid out by George Washington. Here I refer not to his Farewell Address but to another great document on religion in America, one of a series of letters Washington wrote to minority religious communities. No doubt he intended to set the right tone for religious relations in the new republic. One in particular has always had a special meaning for me. It was addressed to the Hebrew Congregation of Newport, Rhode Island. As he said:

No doubt, Washington’s vision of an America embracing "several" peaceful religious vocations was only imperfectly realized in the past. It still is. But America overall has managed a close approximation of this vision. It has provided America with the capacity to pursue energetic democratic politics without succumbing or being likely to succumb to extreme and unreasonable expectations from that politics. Religion has been an important element in moderate, and therefore successful, modern democratic politics.

But the story is not quite finished. It remains to be seen whether America will be able to continue in this path. For the moment that seems to depend on whether and how America is prepared to deal with a religion which has only recently had a bearing for America -- the religion of Islam. It remains to be seen whether the charmed life that both religion and democracy have enjoyed in America will continue.