Between the treatment and the travel, the expenses were devastating.

Help came when a family friend, Greg Selke, a high school athlete and classmate of Daniel’s, raised the idea of a charity footrace. The event, dubbed “Daniel’s 5K,” was first run in 2006. Daniel himself participated in that first race even though the cancer had already spread to his spine, liver, and lungs. Sadly, just a few months later, the disease claimed his young life. But the race that bore his name had taken on a life of its own. After Daniel’s passing, rather than letting the race become simply a memory, his father and mother, Dean and Tammie, took over administrative duties for Daniel’s 5K. They rededicated the event to raising funds for other worthy individuals and organizations.

Since then Daniel’s 5K has raised thousands of dollars for local and national causes. For Daniel’s family, as for countless others, charity begins with neighbors helping neighbors—using innovative means to confront the tragedies that hit us where we live.

The decentralized nature of this model of charity makes it different from the kind with which most of us are familiar. Using the latest technology it is increasingly possible to take direct action to address needs close to us—whatever the scale—whether a natural disaster, a medical catastrophe, or the renovation of a community center.

This approach requires work, to be sure, but many prefer the direct approach to sending a check to a distant foundation. The person-to-person aspect was especially important to Dean. “Everyone that participates in our race gets a thank-you note telling them the specifics of where the money is being spent,” he says. “And once we get the thank-yous from the people we donated the money to, we pass those along as well.”

Now grassroots tactics can intersect with contemporary social media—from Facebook to LinkedIn and beyond. Amanda Justus, co-founder of 31 Heroes, a charity dedicated to servicemen, managed to put together a national fundraising event at locations across the country using only Facebook, WordPress (the software behind many websites), and online message boards.

A resident of Virginia Beach, Virginia, Amanda was drawn to philanthropy primarily out of concern for her community. Just this past August a helicopter crash killed 30 American servicemen, many of them members of the famous Navy SEAL Team Six, plus one dog. Seventeen of the soldiers had been based in Virginia Beach. “It hit so close to home. The whole community was reeling, asking what they could do,” says Amanda. “People were frozen, wanting to help, but having no idea how.”

Brainstorming with friends, Amanda thought to address the crisis in her hometown using her affiliation with another community, albeit a virtual one. Amanda is a CrossFit athlete, practicing an intense full-body workout program favored by firefighters and, not coincidentally, military personnel. She drew upon the loosely knit, national network of CrossFit gyms and was amazed by the speed and scale of the response. “The crash took place on Saturday, August 6th. We set up a Facebook page on Sunday morning, and by Sunday night we had almost a thousand fans. By Tuesday we were up to two thousand.”

The 31 Heroes event played out very simply. Participants paid a registration fee—$31, in fact—and gathered at their local gyms on September 3 to participate in a special workout routine. “In the end we had over 10,000 people participate,” says Amanda. “The way it spread was just viral.”

The key to her success, she believes, was the speed with which it rolled out. “After a major tragedy, everyone wants to do something immediately—but that desire tends to fade away soon after,” she says. “We wanted to right away get on top of that, so the opportunity would be right there for people who were ready to give.” Social media made that rapid response possible.

For all the success of 31 Heroes, Amanda is content to stick with her strengths. Her passion for the cause made her a natural fundraiser, but, “we don’t ever want to be responsible for saying where the funds go,” she says. Indeed, few beginners have the financial background and connections needed for effective disbursal of funds. The solution that both she and Dean found was partnering with established charitable foundations—organizations with grantmaking know-how and apparatus already in place.

When choosing and evaluating charity partners, good neighbors stay close to home, often giving to organizations with whom they have had dealings in the past. The Myslivecek family, for instance, divides the proceeds of Daniel’s 5K among organizations that assisted them during their son’s illness such as Melanoma Hope, the Make-a-Wish Foundation, and Rochester’s Golisano Children’s Hospital. “During Daniel’s treatment, without these organizations, it would have been impossible for us to manage on our own,” says Dean. “So we thought, let’s give something back.”

Using the latest technology it is increasingly possible to take direct action to address needs close to us. From left: Mackenzie Tobin-Padell, John Weiss, and Amanda Justus, the 31 Heroes team. Photo by Mario Gandia.

The choice of a giving partner was not difficult for Amanda either. A military spouse herself, she was familiar with the work of the Navy SEAL Foundation long before the tragic events of August 2011. “I have good friends who are military widows who have benefited greatly from the Foundation,” she says. “I knew that they were a trustworthy organization.” She stresses the importance of due diligence when choosing a charity with which to work: “You want to be a smart consumer with who you give money to.” (For advice on how to tell good charities from bad, and for instructions on how to file a complaint against a fraudulent charity, visit the Federal Trade Commission’s Charity Fraud website.)

Before these new charity organizations could start raising funds, their journey had an unlikely first stop—the Internal Revenue Service. Although the IRS may not inspire charitable thoughts, it is at the forefront of philanthropic support in the U.S. All nonprofit organizations are required to register with tax authorities, and, in return, the IRS provides step-by-step instructions for formalizing your organization, laying out your rights and obligations under the law.

The beauty of it is that you don’t need to know much to get started. “I had helped out with charity events when Daniel was first diagnosed,” says Dean. “I was behind the scenes with auditing and such, but that was the only time I’d ever been involved in anything like that. For the most part, the knowledge I’ve picked up has come from the person who does our taxes.”

Daniel’s 5K made the transition from a one-time, ad hoc event to an annual institution. 31 Heroes is still a work in progress. “We raised about $300,000 this year, which was fantastic,” says Amanda. “With that kind of response, everyone was asking if this was going to be an annual thing.” She and her team would like it to be, but the long-term prospects for either organization are far from certain. Studies show that approximately half of all nonprofits close up shop within their first 10 years of operation. One hurdle is unexpected overhead expenses, including permit fees and liability insurance.

Fundraisers usually take the form of athletic contests, games of chance, or auctions—all highly-regulated activities. “There are a lot of hoops to jump through, especially for a 5k race,” notes Dean. There can also be incidental expenses involved in helping participants get the most out of the event. The Mysliveceks, for example, employ an organization affiliated with U.S. Track and Field to ensure that the course for Daniel’s 5K is properly accredited and that race results are accurately timed and official.

Despite these high operating costs, charities can still thrive, even in the midst of a recession. “With the state of the economy right now, you’d think that more people would say no,” says Dean. “But I feel there’s some higher purpose at play. Because some people don’t really know exactly who Daniel was; they don’t know us all that well; they have no idea how a 5k can support melanoma. But they don’t say no.”

The most effective charities make it easy to say yes by finding ways to use donations of all types—not just cash, but goods, services, and the time and talent of volunteers.

“After the first year, we stopped buying trophies and started giving gift baskets as prizes,” says Dean. The baskets are stocked with donated merchandise and gift cards from area merchants. “People don’t just say yes for the exposure, or the advertising,” he says. “They do it because they think it’s a good idea.”

Donor partners are rewarded with advertising and exposure, of course—and it is this cycle of goodwill, of doing well by doing good, that keeps donors coming back. Even 31 Heroes, which came together quickly and on the cheap, offered a simple premium to entice participants—although Amanda groans remembering it. “That was the toughest part of doing it this year—handling 10,000 T-shirt orders!” she says, laughing. “It was brutal, because it was just the three of us, and we weren’t about to pay someone else to handle the disbursing of shirts.”

The tale of the T-shirts points to perhaps the most important lesson for any budding nonprofit: Be aware of your limitations. Keeping the organization’s goals realistic helps to avoid burnout and frustration and may be the best way to ensure sustainability. “The great thing about Daniel’s 5K is that the committee is kind of laid-back.” says Dean. “We don’t have outrageous expectations for what this is and what we can accomplish.”

Amanda agrees, adding that the same wisdom applies when an event succeeds beyond expectations. “When we put together 31 Heroes, I thought we might possibly get 2,000 participants,” she remembers. “But we quickly outgrew the capabilities of our registration software!” Despite the unanticipated work, the team never seriously considered capping participation at a manageable number. “People want to help, and it’s better to apologize for our slowness in processing the registrations than to cut off the potential money we could be raising.”

The community of participants, bound by a common cause, found it easy to forgive her; and that sense of fellowship, she says, is the greatest reward of her experience. “Just when you think that everything’s gone to hell, it’s very cool to see people come together, amidst tragedy,” she says. “Watching how people have been willing to rally together—I feel very blessed to be in the center of it, and watch it all around me.”

All You Need Is Love The Saturday Evening Post

History Highway

The Historic National Road

In 1806 Thomas Jefferson approved federal funding for one of the first interstate road projects. Known today as the Historic National Road, it stretches 824 miles through six states, from the East Coast nearly to the Mississippi, following the modern I-70 for much of its length.

As befits the route that made the westward migration possible for thousands of settlers, the Road is strewn with sites of historical interest. From the eastern terminus near Hollins Market, the oldest of Baltimore’s public markets and centerpiece of the artsy Union Square neighborhood (market open Tuesday-Saturday; www.union-square.us), you’ll pass Casselman River Bridge State Park, as well as historic inns and tollhouses. From Maryland, the Road swings west through southern Pennsylvania, with a stop at the Fort Necessity National Battlefield, site of the first battle of the French and Indian War. The Old Petersburg Tollhouse, built from native-cut stone, still stands along the roadside.

On the National Road, Maryland's Casselman River Bridge was once the longest of its kind in the U.S.
Photo: Lardner/Klein Landscape Architects, Jim Klein

Passing through a corner of West Virginia, the Road continues into Ohio, where you can ponder the changes in American transportation at the Aviation Heritage National Historical Park in Dayton (www.aviationheritagearea.org). Cut across the entire breadth of Indiana, taking in the famous “Antique Alley”—an extensive loop encompassing more than 900 shops and dealers; it’s the ultimate destination for any fan of collectibles (www.visitrichmond.org). The Road ends in Illinois, the land of Lincoln. Leave time for visits to the Lincoln Log Cabin State Historic Site (www.lincolnlogcabin.org) as well as the Lincoln School Museum in Martinsville (open Sunday afternoons through the summer, 217-382-6666).

Tracing a Path

The Natchez Trace Parkway

Following what is perhaps the oldest continuously used travel route in the U.S., the Natchez Trace Parkway—
a 444-mile stretch of two-lane blacktop running south-
by-southwest from Nashville to the banks of the Mississippi—began as a dirt trail used by the earliest European traders and missionaries, and by local Native American tribes for centuries before that. Travel here was once so hazardous that the trail was called “The Devil’s Backbone.” Today, the Parkway offers the natural beauty 
and rich cultural heritage of the South. Note: Because it sits on mostly high ground, only a few areas of the Parkway were impacted by the flood waters that hit the Nashville area earlier this year. While the entire Parkway is expected to be passable by summer, it’s always a good idea to call ahead and confirm your itinerary.

Also known as "Nutt&rquo;s Folley," the octagonal mansion at Natchez&rquo;s Longwood Plantation was never completed due to a turn of fortune.
Photo by Dennis Adams

On the Parkway, two wheels are as good as four, as the entire road is a designated bicycling area. Along the way, there’s boating and fishing at Laurel Hill Lake in Lawrenceville, Tennessee (931-762-7200), and hiking, camping, and nature trails at Tishomingo State Park in Mississippi (662-438-6914). Or simply stop to smell the wildflowers tracing the trail.

The Parkway is rich in Native American historical sites. In Tupelo you will find the ceremonial Emerald Mound, the Grand Village of the Natchez, and the Chickasaw Village and Fort. You can also pay homage to “the King” at the Elvis Presley Birthplace (www.elvispresleybirthplace.com).

At the Mississippi Crafts Center in Ridgeland, you’ll find artwork and housewares from regional crafters working in traditional and contemporary forms (www.mscrafts.org). Finally, surrender to the charms of old Natchez and view gracious antebellum homes in the city’s historic district (www.natchezms.com).

Rolling on the River

Great River Road National Scenic Byway

The mighty Mississippi is, in a way, the original interstate highway, used for ages to transport goods and passengers downriver. Trace that epic path on the Great River Road National Scenic Byway—a route following the course of the Mississippi through 10 states and over 2,000 miles, from the headwaters to the delta, from St. Paul to New Orleans, straight through the heart of America.

Spend a week or two following Old Man River downstream—through Minnesota, Wisconsin, Iowa, Illinois, Missouri, Kentucky, Tennessee, Arkansas, Mississippi, and finally, Louisiana—and you’ll sample a great swathe of the American experience. Along with unparalleled views of the “Father of Waters,” there are ample stops for bird and wildlife watching, outdoor recreation, shopping, historical sightseeing, and more.

Beautiful old cypress trees surround a natural fish hatchery at Reelfoot Lake State park in Tiptonville, Tennessee.
Photo by Amie Vanderford.

Music runs deep along the river, and many festivals and performance series are held along the route, from Wisconsin’s Riverfest (June 30-July 4, www.riverfestlacrosse.com), presenting dozens of musical groups on six stages, to the annual blues and jazz fests in Davenport, Iowa; from the St. Louis Municipal Opera—this year featuring live outdoor performances of Beauty and the Beast, The Sound of Music, Damn Yankees, and more—to the renowned jazz clubs of New Orleans (www.riverroads.com).

Hit the Road! The Saturday Evening Post

Riding with the Rail-Splitter

The Lincoln Highway, dedicated in 1913, originally ran from New York’s Times Square to San Francisco’s Lincoln Park. Once known as “America’s Main Street,” most of the original route has long since been decommissioned or assimilated into other, newer highways. But a stretch of the original alignment still runs through northern Illinois, from the Chicago metro area to the Mississippi River. Redesignated as a national scenic byway, the 179-mile Illinois Lincoln Highway now makes a perfect weekend jaunt.

Blackhawk Statue
© July 2002 Illinois Lincoln Highway Coalition

Along the Highway, wander the tree-lined streets of Geneva, still graced by Federal-era homes as well as quaint shops in the still-vibrant downtown section (www.genevadowntown.org). Prefer outdoor recreation? Play a few holes at one of the half-dozen golf courses scattered along the Highway, or enjoy hiking, fishing, or touring a historic grist mill at Franklin Creek Natural Area (www.franklingroveil.org). Take in sights such as the majestic Black Hawk statue towering above the Rock River, where paddle-wheeler riverboats still ply the waters (cruises run April through November: www.oregonil.com). Or learn about one of the iconic names in American industry at the John Deere Historic Site, where the great blacksmith perfected “the plow that broke the plains” (Grand Detour, Illinois, 815-652-4551).

Wherever you stop along the way, keep an eye out for the original mile markers. To prove the project’s viability—and the advantages of paved roads, at a time when the concept was still a novel one—the Lincoln Highway was first paved in short stretches called “seedling miles,” which are marked by commemorative signs (www.drivelincolnhighway.com).

Road to Ruins

Car travel is a great way to get from place to place. But an expedition on the Trail of the Ancients—which runs through parts of Colorado and Utah—is a trip back in time. That’s because the Trail is dotted with some of the oldest and best-preserved Native American archeological sites in the entire country. Take a week roaming the Trail’s 480 miles, and catch a glimpse of this corner of America as it was before the coming of Europeans. In Mesa Verde National Park alone, hundreds of cliff dwellings are little changed with the passage of centuries (www.visitmesaverde.com). At the nearby Anasazi Heritage Center in Dolores, Colorado, history comes alive with interactive exhibits, hands-on activities, and live demonstrations of tribal lifeways (970-882-5600). Walk in the footsteps of the Ancestral Puebloan people at Edge of the Cedars State Park and Museum in Blanding, Utah (closed Sundays: www.stateparks.utah.gov), exploring the ruins of an ancient settlement.

Mesa Verde dwellings
© 2006 John Mocko

Farther along the Trail, you’ll find some of the most stunning and iconic scenery in the Southwest. The soaring sandstone buttes of Monument Valley Navajo Tribal Park (www.navajonationparks.org) are familiar from dozens of Hollywood Westerns; about 30 miles to the northeast, the lesser-known Valley of the Gods offers vistas less familiar but no less ravishing. Leave time for a rafting trip on the San Juan River, booked through Wild Rivers Expeditions (800-422-7654 or www.riversandruins.com). End your journey at Four Corners Monument, the only spot in the U.S. where you can stand in four states at once. (At press time, the park was scheduled to reopen in June, 928-871-6647.)

To plan a complete itinerary, explore the National Scenic Byways Project at www.byways.org.

For more inspiring trips, including the Historic National Road, the Natchez Trace Parkway, and the Great River Road National Scenic Byway, look for the Jul/Aug 2010 issue of The Saturday Evening Post (on newsstands the first week of July) or subscribe here.

It’s Road Trip Season! The Saturday Evening Post

I’ve been a know-it-all since I was a kid, but last year I found a way to make it pay.

I’ve watched Jeopardy! for years, calling out my answers to host Alex Trebek, as if he could hear me. My wife, Danielle, watching with me, would sometimes say, “You know, you could clean up on this show.” I shrugged. How do you get on a game show, anyway?

Then one day, Jeopardy! announced an online qualifying test. It seemed like a good opportunity to put up or shut up. I was interested mostly in satisfying my curiosity, and—let’s be honest—in the money, too. So, on the appointed night, I sat at the computer, calm and focused—until the phone rang, dogs started howling outside, and the kids began crawling on my lap. I made a good effort—or tried to. I won’t say I forgot about the test; but I downplayed it ruthlessly and got on with life. Then, two months later, I got an unexpected e-mail: Could I come to Boston for a live tryout in six weeks?

…

At the audition, everyone was personable and good-looking, while I felt crushingly ordinary in my discount-store necktie and cracked glasses. We all took another quiz, got our pictures taken, then played some practice games. I didn’t freeze up or babble—but neither did I dominate in any way. They thanked us, told us that our applications would be held for up to 18 months, then they let us go. It was late. I raced across town to catch the outbound train back to my family, but missed it. Alone in the empty station with no money to take a cab, I entertained unkind thoughts about Jeopardy!

Spring passed. Summer was a haze of late shifts and reheated dinners. When autumn came, I had not watched Jeopardy! in months. And then, just before Halloween, I got the call inviting me to California as a contestant on the show. Already I was calculating airfares and hotels, thinking, Can I afford to do this?

To read the full article, see the Jan/Feb 2010 issue of The Saturday Evening Post, on newsstands throughout January and February, subscribe now, or purchase the issue at ShopThePost.com.

Want to be a game show contestant? Check out our exclusive tips only at saturdayeveningpost.com.

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Firsthand America: “I Was a Game-Show Champion!” The Saturday Evening Post

Jefferson’s no-skin-off-my-nose attitude is so thoroughly modern that it’s hard to remember just how radical his view was in its day. Despite the fact that America was colonized partly by settlers looking to practice their beliefs without discrimination, the Founders still lived in a world where government-sanctioned and supported religion was the norm, where differences of faith and conscience could lead to seizure of property, bodily harm, and worse. By guaranteeing freedom of worship as a basic Constitutional right for all Americans, Jefferson and the rest of the Framers were attempting something entirely new. Almost miraculous, in fact.

Consider that the Constitution and the Bill of Rights were written and ratified by a group composed exclusively of white, male landowners (many of them slaveowners), most with ties to just one specific religion — more than 50 percent of the Founding Fathers were affiliated with the Episcopal church, according to some historians. Not exactly the diverse dream team you or I might have chosen to safeguard the religious freedom of a new nation.

But that’s exactly what they did, and in the first lines of the First Amendment: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof …” Known forever after as the Establishment Clause, this pronouncement — and the entire amendment — has over time proven to be a versatile tool that does more than separate church and state. It protects America’s faithful and faithless alike, providing both freedom of religion and freedom from it, as appropriate.

To be sure, the Founding Fathers couldn’t foresee how their efforts would one day help to make America the most religiously diverse nation in the world, nor anticipate how the Establishment Clause would come into play on future issues, from the teaching of evolutionary theory in schools, to the displaying of the Ten Commandments in public buildings, to the constitutionality of the Pledge of Allegiance.

For more than 200 years, the balance between religious liberty and the rule of law has been constantly renegotiated. To understand how that balance has been maintained both then and now, we need to look back at the influences that shaped the Founders and the documents they created to serve their country and — ultimately — us.

Founding Faith

Christ Church in Philadelphia contains the Liberty Window, which depicts the opening prayer in the first Continental Congress.
Courtesy of Christ Church Philadelphia, Photo by Will Brown

The traditional idea of the Founding Fathers as conventionally pious Christian gentlemen is a myth, of course. But neither were they actively hostile to religion. John Adams, to pick one, remained a regular churchgoer throughout his long life. Jefferson, meanwhile, was skeptical of religion, yet revered Jesus as a great moral philosopher, even assembling a personal edition of the New Testament with scissors and a glue-pot, retaining the ethical teachings of Christ while editing out the miracles. (You can see the Jefferson Bible today at the Smithsonian in Washington, D.C.)

The time was ripe for change. This was the Age of Enlightenment, when advances in the sciences forced philosophers to reconsider humanity’s place in the universe. Educated men of the day, including Jefferson and other Founding Fathers, were attracted to Enlightenment ideals and beliefs, including Deism: the notion of a Creator whose existence could be deduced from His handiwork, but who took no active part in human affairs — God as absentee landlord.
Another Enlightenment ideal that exerted a powerful influence over the Framers was the social contract. “Social contract theory holds that government doesn’t descend from on high, but from voluntary agreements among ordinary citizens,” says Gary Kowalski, author of Revolutionary Spirits, an account of the philosophical foundations of the Constitution. This all but flew in the face of conventional wisdom, which held that government derived its authority from God, from the top down.

As if that wasn’t enough to lay the ground for revolutionary change, there was also an upswell of religious devotion among the colonial populace, with Evangelicals preaching that all men are created equal, and that each person’s value is determined not by social class, but by moral behavior. Sound familiar?

The Declaration of Independence, then, served not just as the founding document of the American Revolution, but as a balance of the influences of the Founders and the average citizen. It asserted our unalienable rights, endowed by our Creator. But this truth was not handed down in a mystical vision; rather it was self-evident, revealed by rational observation.

The declaration makes no further mention of God. The Founders strove to emphasize that separation from England was an expression of human rights, rather than Divine Right. “The Founders believed that religion could be a healthy force in society — if it were exercised within a zone of personal autonomy,” says Kowalski.

There were practical reasons, too. Different Christian sects held majorities in different colonies — some as established churches, with taxpayer support — and religious language that appeared to favor one faith over another might have jeopardized the early union entirely. “In some respects, we bungled into religious liberty,” says Charles Haynes, senior scholar at the First Amendment Center and author of several books on religion in public life. “Early on, the religious divisions in the colonies gave us little choice. So, in a way, we have religious diversity to thank for religious liberty.”

Footing the Bill

Like the declaration before it, the Constitution is also relatively free of religious-speak. It does not solicit God’s blessing; instead, it begins with an invocation of “We, the People.” Indeed, the Constitution’s only mention of religion is negative — in Article Six, where it expressly commands that “no religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust under the United States.”

“The lack of God-language in the Constitution is not an oversight,” Kowalski says. “It provoked protest among more orthodox Christians, who thought that government needed some divine sanction.” But in the end, a majority voted to keep the Constitution faith-neutral. Meanwhile, some signatories felt that the Constitution did not go far enough to guarantee basic human rights. In response, James Madison proposed a number of amendments; of the ten that comprise the Bill of Rights, the First demarcates our religious freedoms in the plain language of the Establishment Clause which, incidentally, only applies to the federal government. Several states still had established churches, while others prided themselves as havens of conscience. The Establishment Clause split the difference by throwing the issue back to the states. Those with established churches could continue to favor them, while disestablished states were free to remain so.

The true vindication for the Establishment Clause came over the years, as a sense of common American identity began to grow, and states with official churches began, one by one, to disestablish them by acts of legislature.

Moving the Frontier

Since its beginnings, America has been extraordinarily religiously diverse. Although it’s true that, as of 1800, the majority of white Americans were Protestants of some kind, that formulation misrepresents the religious landscape of the time and the strained, even hostile relations between various congregations. The American Protestant identity — the tendency of many mainline denominations to downplay their differences and to think of themselves as “Protestant” first and foremost — only developed as immigration and expansion allowed for growth among minority faith groups. The years 1800-1850 saw U.S. population quadruple as Catholics, Lutherans, and Jews arrived from Europe, and as the country acquired territories from France, Spain, and Mexico, making their inhabitants — mostly Catholics — into newly minted U.S. citizens.

Today, as then, the country is experiencing a boom in immigration; and again, immigrants are bringing their faiths with them. Islam is considered to be one of the fastest growing religions in America. According to at least one survey, there are more Buddhists in America now than Evangelical Episcopalians. Some projections indicate that by mid-century, Protestant Americans will be the ones in the minority, a notion that makes many anxious, even now.

Over our country’s history, different groups have been singled out as threats to national unity. In the 1800s, Catholics were the bogeyman of choice. Anti-papist preachers warned that we were losing our country to those who did not share American values. Catholics, they claimed, could never be real Americans; they owed their true allegiance to a foreign tyrant and alien laws, and were too superstitious and backward to ever blend into our society.

If that rhetoric has a familiar ring to it, it’s because those same words have been used recently against other immigrant religious groups, particularly Muslims in the wake of the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. “Every time we come to a period in our history when we are traumatized, when we are afraid, this anxiety returns us to the idea of recovering the America that’s been lost,” says Haynes. But Catholics managed to assimilate within a generation or two, and the American Catholic Church proved to be a different sort of institution than the European church, simply because of the cultural and political conditions on the ground. Just so, there’s reason to believe that Islam in our democratic, pluralistic society will be unlike Islam practiced elsewhere.

Homegrown Hallelujahs

In the 19th century, new denominations founded in the United States would prove vital to the cause of religious freedom — both for their minority status and for doctrines that brought them into conflict with the legal system.

In 1879 the Supreme Court ruled that civil laws trumped the Mormon doctrine of polygamy as a religious duty. Nasty lawsuits and countersuits raged for years, threatening the continued existence of the church itself. In the end, American identity proved so important to the Mormon church that it officially revised its religious doctrine to bring it in line with U.S. law.

But there have been times, too, when the law favored the dictates of religious conscience. In 1943 the Supreme Court reversed a ruling that originally upheld a Pennsylvania school board’s expulsion of Jehovah’s Witness schoolchildren who refused to salute the flag, but not before the controversy touched off a firestorm in communities across the country, where Witnesses were beaten, run out of town, or even jailed for sedition.

In recent years, the Mormon Church has cast itself as a defender of traditional marriage laws, leading the opposition to marriage rights for gays and lesbians. And by their very unwillingness to engage in secular politics, Jehovah’s Witnesses have done the nation a great service in helping strengthen the protection of religious practice from government intrusion.

Moving Backward, Moving Forward

While the First Amendment keeps government out of religion, it also protects against the flip side: the injection of religion into government, using the political process to pursue essentially moral goals. To be sure, many of our great social movements — abolitionism, temperance, women’s rights — had religious foundations, beginning with the idea of inalienable, God-given rights. But in trying to reform American society, some movements misstepped, promoting a particular, and even particularly extreme, religious viewpoint under government auspices. Prohibition, for instance, was enacted in 1920 under pressure from a movement led by Protestant sects. Many of the measure’s opponents were also people of faith, who believed that government shouldn’t meddle in moral issues.

We’ll probably never see Prohibition return; but other battles keep flaring up. In 2004 atheists challenged the recitation of the Pledge of Allegiance in public schools as an unconstitutional endorsement of religion because it contained the words “under God.” (The motto “In God We Trust” on U.S. currency has recently come under fire for the same reason.) The Scopes trial of 1925 challenged a Tennessee law banning instruction in evolutionary theory. Eighty years later, the Kansas Board of Education voted to return creationism — calling it “Intelligent Design” — to the classroom. (The vote was reversed in 2007.)

Today, many Americans are confused and angered about the principle of separation, Haynes says. “For people afraid of losing our identity, it only pushes them to be more hostile to the First Amendment. That’s dangerous because that principle is the core condition for religious freedom that protects the rights of all.”

Proper understanding was just one of the areas addressed at a recent conference on the future of religious freedom in America, cosponsored by the First Amendment Center. There, policy experts identified several concerns for the future, including the consensus that free exercise of religion needs more protection still — especially for minority faiths; ways to prevent future backlash against certain religious groups — especially Muslim Americans in the wake of 9/11; and the need to provide more First Amendment education.

“The challenge is to reaffirm our commitment to religious freedom in a way that allows us to address our differences,” says Haynes. “It will take a real engagement, as individuals and communities, to find a way to protect the rights of people of all faiths and no faith. I think we can do it, but we can’t do it just by hoping for it.”

Or praying for it.

Faith in America The Saturday Evening Post