“America is actually the country to which people came in the most of a hurry, to try and find if that life could really be lived as a society. Some of them came to practice their religion freely. Many came to escape from persecution by other religions. Some came to be free from religion altogether, and that's why the Constitution is godless and doesn't mention the word, but it was not written by atheists. It was written by democratic theists and secularists, and that's why the meeting at Philadelphia, which decided these matters and decides them still for us, was a godless one, if not an atheist one. And that's why I think modern America should be a lot more anti-religious than it is. It should pay less respect, and make much less reverence toward religion, than its mass media… presently do.”

—  Christopher Hitchens

2000s, 2000, "Hostility Of America to Religion" (2000)

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Christopher Hitchens 305
British American author and journalist 1949–2011

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“The First Amendment expresses our Nation’s fundamental commitment to religious liberty by means of two provisions–one protecting the free exercise of religion, the other barring establishment of religion. They were written by the descendents of people who had come to this land precisely so that they could practice their religion freely. Together with the other First Amendment guarantees–of free speech, a free press, and the rights to assemble and petition–the Religion Clauses were designed to safeguard the freedom of conscience and belief that those immigrants had sought. They embody an idea that was once considered radical: Free people are entitled to free and diverse thoughts, which government ought neither to constrain nor to direct.”

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