Korean Dream: A Vision For a Unified Korea

By Hyun Jin Preston Moon

Korean Dream: A Vision for a Unified Korea is a powerful call to action for Koreans and supporters everywhere to achieve a new nation, rooted in a common past. In this Centennial Edition, which debuted on several bestseller lists including the Wall Street Journal, LA Times, and Publishers Weekly, Dr. Hyun Jin Preston Moon presents an innovative way forward for the Korean Peninsula that at its heart is Korean led. Ultimately, Korean reunification is the only long-term solution to security, economic, and social problems created through a 70-year division of the Peninsula.

Dr. Moon goes a step further, offering a groundbreaking approach to peace rooted in the founding principles of Hongik Ingan, cultural practices, and engagement from civil society organizations to empower Koreans to become global advocates for peace. Korean Dream calls upon Koreans, Korean diaspora, and people everywhere to take charge and work to achieve a reunified Korean peninsula.

Korean Dream Empowers the Korean People to Rediscover Their Historic Identity. Dr. Moon’s vision empowers the Korean people to rediscover their 5,000-year-old historic identity and take it upon themselves to lead the way toward a peaceful reunification of the peninsula.

A Nation Built on Shared History and Heritage. For reunification to happen, modern South Korea must recognize and embrace its shared history, heritage and culture. South Korea’s surging economy and decades of separation caused many to lose sight of its past and common connection with Koreans in the North.

A Korean-led Future with Universal Principles and Values. Korea must represent the goals of its people in the form of a popular, representative form of government. A reunified Korea must give the Korean people the same freedoms and human rights that the American people and others around the world have today.

Live for the Greater Benefit of All Humanity. Hongik Ingan defines the hope, potential, and strength of the Korean people. Korean Dream is devoted to the welfare of mankind in working toward reunification, drawing support from participants regarding human rights, universal spiritual principles and natural law toward a civic society.

The Role of Civil Society and NGOs. Civic associations are the heart of a thriving democracy; a medium through which citizens contribute to and build the life of the national community. The Korean people must engage with one another and civic associations to address issues in local areas beyond the scope of government.

Reunification is Only the First Step. Beyond Korean reunification, the Korean people would be in a position to become global advocates on the basis of high moral principles. These principles of the Korean Dream will become a global call for realizing a world that lives as One Family under God.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Morgan James Publishing
• Release date: May 14, 2024
• ISBN: 9781642799828

Hyun Jin Preston Moon

Dr. Hyun Jin Preston Moon is the founder and leader of several international peace organizations and a recognized and knowledgeable thought leader on Korean reunification. He is the author of the award-winning book, Korean Dream, which articulates a vision for reunification based on the aspirations of the Korean people. Born in Korea, he is the proud son of a family that has actively pursued Korean independence and unification for four generations. He is American educated, having majored in history at Columbia University and earned an MBA from Harvard Business School. His study of U.S. history has given him a deep appreciation of the importance of founding principles in the life of a nation. Dr. Moon’s background gives him a unique perspective on Korea's future and its global significance for peace and development. In various capacities, he works across lines of identity including culture, ethnicity, nationality and religion to foster the moral, innovative leadership necessary to resolve the most pressing issues in the world today.

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AUTHOR’S PREFACE

The writing of this book and the articulation of the Korean Dream has been the culmination of several converging factors. First, it is part of my family heritage. My father devoted his life to heal the division of the two Koreas. He saw the unification of the peninsula as an essential part of building a global foundation for world peace. He suffered for his convictions in a North Korean labor camp but ultimately pioneered an opening to the North through his 1991 meeting with Kim Il-sung. Further back in time, my great grand-uncle, Moon Yoon-guk, helped to draft the 1919 Korean Declaration of Independence.

In addition to this heritage, I have always been an avid student of history with a particular interest in Korea. At Columbia University, I wrote my honors thesis on the interwar years in Korea between 1945, the end of World War II, and 1950, the beginning of the Korean War. After my studies, with a major in history from Columbia, a Master of Business Administration from Harvard, and then a Master of Religious Education from the Unification Theological Seminary, I worked closely with my father to advance his world peace initiatives and, particularly, his efforts for Korean unification. This eclectic educational background ranging from history to business and religion gave me a unique perspective on the issue of unification and the importance of vision, principles, and tangible outcomes.

To me, the way forward should not be defined by reactive policy decisions without any clarity on what unification should create. Rather, it should start with our identity as the Korean people, defined by our unique historical legacy. That identity, then, should define our destiny and, in turn, clarify the goal of unification and our people’s larger role in the world.

Throughout my life, from early childhood to my current work, I have traveled widely around the world, especially to the emerging nations of the global South. I have led a global peace movement and launched numerous service, educational, and business projects in these countries. Through this global foundation, I have gained a unique perspective on international affairs, the developing world, and the role that a united Korea would be poised to play in both.

My heritage, my studies, and my life experiences and accomplishments have all combined to engender the ideas in this book. It is not a book about policy and the process of unification. It is an aspirational treatise about a vision that should precede that process and serve as a compass to guide us through it, a vision of Korean history, identity, and destiny.

This book was written originally for a Korean audience. I believe the vision that I articulate has the power to transcend the current political division and unite the Korean people. I call on Koreans to reassess their current values and priorities and to live up to the highest ideals embodied in their history, particularly the principle of Hongik Ingan—living to broadly benefit all humanity. This means focusing less on the past and more on the future. It means creating a nation based on universal principles and values that will benefit the Northeast Asia region with greater peace, security, and prosperity.

Since the pursuit of a principled unification of Korea will have such a wide impact throughout the Northeast Asia region, the initial 2014 Korean language publication of Korean Dream was closely followed by the Japanese language edition in 2015.

Of course, the future of the Korean peninsula has implications that reach far beyond the boundaries of Northeast Asia. It will affect peace and prosperity globally—for better or for worse. The United States, in particular, has strong geopolitical, security, and economic interests in the region. More important, it has intimate ties with Korea that run deep. Americans spilled their blood together with their Korean brothers to preserve the freedom of South Korea during the Korean War.

Since then, the ties between the two nations have grown closer so that South Korea has become one of America’s strongest allies. South Korea has also grown remarkably so that today it is active as a leader on the global stage and stands as a full partner with the United States and other advanced nations. American interests are closely aligned with South Korea’s, not least because both nations stand upon and honor certain fundamental and universal principles and values, the central theme of my book.

With this in mind, I am honored to now present Korean Dream to an English-speaking audience, particularly in America. There are many friends of Korea in America who understand that the future of the two countries are tied together. There is also a growing Korean diaspora in America with many second and third generation Koreans who feel a tie to their ancestral land but do not read Korean well.

This English edition is intended for such readers, to show them the great possibilities that will arise from a Korea unified on a foundation of principle, and to engage their support in promoting that dream. A united people that embodies the Korean Dream will not only be a catalyst for peace and prosperity in Asia. It will also offer a powerful model for overcoming many of the conflicts that are tearing apart our world today.

Circumstances today are making peaceful unification an ever more real possibility. Since the year 2014 we have seen the vision of unification shift from being a far distant prospect to now occupying the center of international attention. That is why it is urgent that we prepare and build a strong moral foundation for unification.

In August 2014, Pope Francis visited Korea urging reconciliation between North and South Korea and encouraging the search for new approaches to peace. He called on all Koreans to shape a culture formed by the noblest traditional values of the Korean people.

In the following pages I articulate a vision for the future of Korea built upon those values and the destiny toward which they point Koreans. I hope that this book will inspire many outside Korea, particularly Koreans in the diaspora and their American friends, to share this vision and work to make it a reality.

Hyun Jin Preston Moon

BUILDING THE KOREAN DREAM

Introduction to the Centennial Edition

In the years since its original publication, Korean Dream: A Vision for a Unified Korea has been a catalyst for the vision it put forth, building robust multi-sector civil society support at home and abroad.

Significant steps have been made since 2014 in bringing global awareness to the Korean peninsula and moving the divided Korea closer to becoming one again. The Global Peace Foundation (GPF) and Action for Korea United (AKU) have been working together to advance understanding of and support for the Korean Dream approach internationally but especially among the South Korean public, engaging policy experts, universities, and the general public, particularly youth.

The Korean Dream is inspiring a dynamic citizen movement coordinated by the civil society coalition Action for Korea United. AKU has grown rapidly since its inception in 2011 and official launch in 2012, and today includes over 1,000 member organizations that support the Korean Dream. Most recently, AKU has expanded its network to engage diaspora Koreans, who number over 7.4 million people across 194 nations around the world, with especially significant bases in Japan and the United States.

A Korean Dream Unification Academy works to conduct an ongoing series of public forums on the topic. Over 4,000 college students have taken part in seminars, and textbooks have been published in cooperation with the ROK government for middle and high school students.

GPF holds expert policy forums in Korea on the Korean Dream and unification. In Washington, D.C., it co-sponsored a series of five forums on unification with the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a leading U.S. think tank on international affairs. These forums helped to bring Korean unification to the forefront as an issue for policy makers and experts.

Outreach extends beyond experts, schools, and colleges. There has been a strong cultural outreach through the One K Global Campaign. The highlight of the campaign’s launch was the collaboration with leading Korean songwriters to produce the New Era Unification Song. The music video featured K-pop artists and politicians from across party lines in a show of solidarity. Over thirty K-pop artists performed at the first One K Concert in Seoul in October 2015 for an audience of 40,000 young people. The song was the culmination of the concert and the entire performance was broadcast nationwide by SBS. Years later, at the historic inter-Korea summit between North and South Korean leaders, this song was selected and played as the theme song.

The campaign has since gone global. World-renowned artists including Peabo Bryson, Dami Im, Edray, Zendee, and Sabrina joined together with K-pop stars including Psy, SHINee, CNBlue, BAP, BtoB, AOA, and B1A4 for the 2017 One K Concert at Manila’s Mall of Asia Arena. A new unification song, Korean Dream, was premiered at the concert which was produced by Grammy Award winners Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis.

The third One K Concert on March 1, 2019 was a part of the March 1, 1919 Independence Movement Centennial Commemoration where dozens of One K stars performed at the National Assembly Plaza in Seoul to celebrate 100 years since the March First Movement and to envision a future of reunification and peace.

Other initiatives seek to engage a wider public with the unification issue on a practical basis. There are annual Unification projects and Unification essay contests for students. The Power of 1,000 Won campaign encourages younger students to put aside a little money every day to support bakeries that feed orphans in the North. AKU also actively engages with growing numbers of North Koreans living in South Korea, providing practical support to help defectors adapt to modern city life. AKU also works with groups of defectors who want to send information into North Korea to the people they had to leave behind.

This growing support for the Korean Dream has been captured by the Korean media which has followed all the activities quite closely. This work has been featured in all the daily newspapers, major magazines, and television networks. SBS was the broadcast partner of the March 1, 2019 event, which aired live throughout Korea and was rebroadcasted thereafter multiple times. SBS even developed a special program aired throughout its networks in the Asian region. Social media campaigns, including video message drives, have engaged tens of thousands throughout the world on the Korean issue, building awareness and interest in realizing the Korean Dream.

The year 2019 marks 100 years since Koreans rallied around their vision for an ideal nation in the Declaration of Independence proclaimed on March 1, 1919. Based on this important milestone, we have issued this Centennial Edition of Korean Dream. In this edition, we have included exclusive photos to showcase the many exciting moments and activities in the building of the Korean Dream movement.

It is our hope that the publication of the Centennial Edition of this important book will continue to advance the vision of the One Korea of our dreams.

Editorial Team of Korean Dream: The Centennial Edition

CHAPTER 1

The Korean Dream

If one person has a dream, it is just a dream, but if all people have that dream, it becomes a reality.

– GENGHIS KHAN

The Korean people have always been one, united by a shared five-thousand-year history, a common language, and a common cultural heritage. Yet, since the end of World War II, we have been divided into two nations, arbitrarily separated against our wishes on the cutting block of rising geopolitical tensions between the West and the Soviet bloc. The legacy of this division, like a wound that has not been treated, festers and threatens the very health of the Korean people, the region, and the world to this day.

In the South, the Miracle on the Han River has transformed the country from a poor agricultural backwater to a manufacturing, trading, and technological powerhouse—one of the top fifteen economies in the world—in the space of just two generations. However, prosperity has come at a cost. Many of our most cherished cultural traditions and values are being eroded in the pursuit of material comforts, Western progressive ideals, and popular culture. Yet, historically, our unique Korean heritage is what enabled us to endure and transcend a long history of suffering—the DNA that engendered the prosperity that the South enjoys today. Losing this Korean identity as a common people and, at one time, as a whole nation, South Koreans have increasingly turned away from the hopes and moral imperative of unification.

The North, in reality and in our imaginations, has become a black hole. We are all familiar with the satellite photos that show lights blazing throughout this region at night, especially in the major metropolitan centers of Seoul, Busan, Tokyo, Beijing, and the great seaboard cities of China. Yet, north of the 38th parallel up to the Tumen and Yalu Rivers, all we see is an area of unrelieved darkness. To most observers, the darkness that enshrouds the North without a single flickering light of hope is a fitting image for the realities of that regime. The people of North Korea are desperately impoverished and destitute. Their government is incapable of feeding them, and its citizens, denied all semblance of freedoms and human rights, have few opportunities for creativity and enterprise.

Because information about and contact with the North has been so tightly controlled, North Koreans seem increasingly alien to people in the South. Although the Soviet Union has collapsed and the failures of communism have been exposed, the North continues to maintain the ideological, political, military, and economic frameworks of the Cold War era, unable to recognize its obsolescence in our current age of globalization. This reality is deepening the gulf between the two Koreas along social, political, and economic lines, making unification a harder proposition as we move forward.

When we Koreans, in both North and South, look at our common history, the current seventy-year division is but a drop in the ocean of centuries of shared experiences, traditions, and culture.

We must look beyond our current divisions and seek a new united future rooted in a common past.

I am a man who believes in big dreams. I also believe that Korea today is ripe for such a challenge. In this book I want to show that a great and historic opportunity lies within our grasp. I want to lay out a new vision for Korea that can transform the peninsula, the Northeast region, and the world. What will that dream look like?

Before exploring that question, I want to emphasize the power of a big dream in shaping the course of human history. Dreamers frame new possibilities that can transcend the limitations of current reality. When people are inspired to pursue those possibilities, the world is changed, often in remarkable and unforeseen ways. Let’s look at two examples of great dreams. One is from the East, and one is from the West.

GENGHIS KHAN’S DREAM:

ONE WORLD UNDER ONE HEAVEN

The first dream is One World under One Heaven, and the dreamer was Genghis Khan. He is known as a conqueror and an invader of Korea, but his conquests created a remarkable empire. There are important lessons to be learned by understanding how he achieved his vision and became more than just a conquering warlord.

In the first half of the thirteenth century, he led mobile and disciplined armies of horsemen that burst out in all directions from the Mongolian steppe. Through lightning campaigns he rapidly established the largest land empire the world has ever known, greater than the empires of Alexander the Great or Rome. It stretched from Korea in the east to Poland in the west, and from the Arctic in the north to Persia and India in the south.

He was a brilliant organizer and military strategist. After the First World War, armored warfare specialists studied his campaigns as models for the strategic use of tanks. Jawaharlal Nehru, independence leader and first prime minister of modern India, said, Alexander and Caesar seem petty before him.¹

He was, without doubt, a military genius, but that was not what lay at the heart of his success. He grew up in the harsh circumstances of the Mongolian steppe. Its grasslands were populated by scattered, warring nomadic clans, who for generations had lived and died divided by petty tribal rivalries, trapped in a cycle of self-imposed violence.

Genghis Khan himself suffered harshly within this culture. As a boy, he and his mother and brothers were driven out of the clan after his father, the clan leader, died, to live as outcasts at the mercy of any raiding band. Later, his first wife, Borte, was kidnapped by the hostile Merkid clan and held prisoner for some time before he could rescue her.

These experiences marked him deeply, but instead of becoming trapped by his circumstances, he conceived a vision that led him to transcend them. Rather than striving to become just another powerful clan leader, defending his own people and attacking his rivals, he dreamed of ending the centuries-old cycle of conflict and uniting the Mongol tribes. The tribes became a nation, animated by the dream of Genghis Khan, and that nation transformed the Eurasian world for centuries to come.

Genghis Khan’s conquests were hinged on the idea that if one person has a dream, it is only a dream, but if all people share that dream, it becomes a reality. This was the secret of his success. While he used force initially to resolve conflict with rival tribes, that was not the power that united the Mongolian tribes.

There is a saying that a slave obeys because he is forced to, but a free man follows because he chooses to. Genghis Khan’s success lay in his ability to align the will of his followers, as well as others who came into contact with his Mongol bands, to aspire to the same dream that had motivated his conquests. That is how Genghis Khan united the Mongolian tribes and later the Eurasian continent.

The vision guiding Genghis Khan was a simple one, yet with profound significance: there should be One World under One Heaven. This was the ultimate key to peace, a peace that could become universal in its scope. War and conquest were necessary evils, not an end in themselves. The result of this vision was what Jack Weatherford, in his influential book, Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World, calls the persistent universalism of the Mongol Empire. He credits the Mongols with creating the nucleus of a universal culture and world system.²

The phrase under One Heaven was not mere rhetoric but was at the heart of Genghis Khan’s vision. He believed in a divinely ordained universal order that was the key to peace and prosperity. Nehru, a great peace advocate, was nevertheless fascinated by Genghis Khan because he realized that Genghis Khan was so much more than a brilliant military conqueror. He was struck by the Mongol leader’s belief in "the unchangeable law for ever and ever, and no one could disobey it. Even the emperor was subject to it."³

Based on this concept, Genghis Khan promulgated simple laws with universal application, rooted in nascent concepts of human rights and fundamental freedoms. Weatherford sees in the laws and systems of the Mongol Empire the seeds of a new global culture that continued to develop long after the Mongol Empire’s decline. He finds those seeds in the promotion of free commerce, open communication, shared knowledge, secular politics, religious coexistence, international law, and diplomatic immunity.⁴

These were the fruits of Genghis Khan’s vision. His empire respected the cultures of conquered regions and established freedom of religion in an attempt to neutralize it as a source of oppression and conflict. The Mongols promoted a society in which ability was valued more than social status, abolishing the caste system and breaking the monopoly powers of local elites. This society also reduced discrimination against women and upheld the dignity of all human life, encouraging multicultural, multiracial, and multireligious marriages.

The Yassa, or Great Law, as the Mongol legal code was known, restrained the traditional causes of feuding among tribes across the empire and so promoted an era of peace and prosperity. The resulting Pax Mongolica, as it has become known, lasted from the end of the Mongol conquests in the mid-thirteenth century until the end of the fourteenth century, embracing the whole of the Eurasian continent. At that time, there was a common saying about that period that a maiden bearing a nugget of gold on her head could wander safely throughout the realm.⁵

Marco Polo, the Venetian explorer, was a direct beneficiary of this peace. With free trade and secure travel established across all the regions ranging from Asia through the Middle East to Eastern Europe, he could travel safely to China and record his journeys in a book titled Travels of Marco Polo. This sparked a growing European interest in the land of the great Khan.

The Mongol peace combined with their promotion of trade led to the flow of Asian products and technology into Europe and growing cultural exchange between the civilizations of East and West. Europe began to emerge from its long isolation following the fall of the Roman Empire. If it were not for Genghis Khan, the European slumber might have lasted far longer, and the development of the modern world been postponed.

Genghis Khan offers a remarkable example of the power of a dream to see beyond existing circumstances, however intractable they may seem, and envision something better. When that dream was rooted in a compelling vision and was then shared and owned by a clan, tribe, nations, and a continent, it had the power to transform the stark, unenlightened reality of medieval Europe and Asia into embracing a new cultural paradigm and world system. Although we may never know explicitly what truly motivated Genghis Khan’s conquest, the historical facts show clearly that the formula to his success was not the lust for power but the universal aspiration, principles, and values implicit in his vision of One World under One Heaven, the source of that unchangeable and universal law that applied to all people everywhere, regardless of their power and status.

As Koreans, we feel a natural affinity with Mongolia, its people, and its history. We have many common cultural roots and share the blue Mongolian birth spots. This makes the example of Genghis Khan especially interesting for us. Through him, we can learn the power of a great dream to rise above the limitations of circumstance, unite a people into one nation, and transform the world.

This is not just a story in the history books. Tomorrow’s history is being made by our choices and actions today. Past history is a source of lessons we can apply to meet and overcome the challenges of our present. As Koreans, we should reflect on the story of Genghis Khan and ask ourselves: What is our dream today for the future of our country and its role in the world?

THE AMERICAN DREAM AND THE BEGINNING OF THE MODERN AGE

The second dream is the American Dream. It helped give birth to the modern world and modern ideas of human rights and freedoms and remains an active force in the world today. But what exactly is the American Dream? Understanding the right answer to this question is important when considering Korea’s future direction.

The United States of America has been the leading nation in the world since the Second World War. Today, it is often referred to as the sole remaining superpower. Its military strength is unrivaled, and it remains the world’s strongest economy, a position it has achieved in a little over two hundred years since its founding.

America did not begin as a rich and powerful country. Most of its land remained undeveloped, and, prior to independence, the thirteen original states were agricultural colonies of Great Britain. In relation to the power centers of Europe, America was a backwater. So how did it become the power that it is today?

The European settlement of the Americas was a milestone in the emergence of the modern world. It took place in the wake of a paradigm shift in European worldviews brought about by the Renaissance and Reformation. It is instructive to compare the divergent courses followed by North and South America in the centuries since settlement first began. Although Latin America today is improving economically and politically in many places, its history has been one of stark contrast with North America. Latin America has been marked by political corruption and instability, dictatorships, economic inefficiency, and poverty for vast numbers who were not part of the ruling elites.

The fundamental difference in the course of the two halves of the Western hemisphere lays in their heritage. North America was shaped by the British legacy, which paved the way for the first constitutional government and the recognition of the fundamental rights of all Englishmen.⁶ The central and southern regions of the Americas, on the other hand, were largely influenced by the more feudal political-religious traditions of the Iberian Peninsula that remained a bastion and champion of old Europe. When those feudal traditions weakened, they were replaced by an absolutist monarchy.⁷

I was born in Korea but received my education in America. I became a keen student of American history, searching to understand the source of America’s success and the true meaning of the American Dream. What was it that attracted immigrants to America from all over the world? I came to realize that the essence of this dream was not to be found in externals. It was not about a bigger house, a second car, or a better education for the children. It was to be found in the principles and values that underpinned the American founding and opened the way for a society and nation very different from those of Latin America.

When the thirteen colonies united to declare independence from the British Crown, it marked a watershed in the history of America and the world. Their quarrel with the Crown was that they were being denied the rights guaranteed in England to freeborn Englishmen. As part of a colony of Great Britain, the colonists, most of whom were of English descent, believed that they were entitled as British subjects to have a representative voice in Parliament. However, they were upset by the fact that they were subject to the arbitrary actions of the Crown without any representation and recourse.

Prior to the American Revolution, there had been many rebellions throughout the world, but none had appealed to universal principles rooted in God. The Declaration of Independence, written and signed by the Founding Fathers of the United States and proclaimed on July 4, 1776, offered a new vision of nationhood. It marked the birth of the American Dream.

The Declaration of Independence was a direct challenge to the arbitrary and absolute exercise of power by a monarch and to the doctrine of the divine right of kings that supported it. The Founding Fathers were able to draw on the British legacy in formulating their principles, because England had already challenged the divine right of kings in a bloody civil war with Charles I (r. 1625–1649) and through the Glorious Revolution of 1688, which established a constitutional monarchy with clearly delimited powers.

In most of Europe, however, absolute monarchy prevailed, reinforced by rigid social hierarchies. The resulting political philosophy was starkly expressed by a minister of Francis I, the last Holy Roman Emperor and emperor of Austria-Hungary until his death in 1835. He characterized the emperor’s policy as unabated maintenance of the sovereign’s authority, and a denial of all claims on the part of the people to a participation in that authority.⁸

America’s Founding Fathers pioneered a very different course. They rejected the idea that the monarch’s authority came from God and was, therefore, absolute. Instead, the Declaration of Independence advocated the theory of natural rights: the notion that fundamental human rights and freedoms are bestowed, not by the state or monarch, but directly to the people by the Creator, and the purpose of government was to ensure the protection of those rights.

Thus, each person has intrinsic value that comes from the Creator and is the basis for the essential dignity of each person and the rights that such dignity naturally entails. It was truly a birth of an enlightened concept of liberty and human rights that pointed the way forward to our modern concept of universal human rights and freedoms.

America’s founders also recognized that the principles of equal human rights and fundamental freedoms could only be effective when citizens had the moral character to use them responsibly. A free people must adhere to a transcendent moral standard. In short, a free people must be a self-governing people of virtue. John Adams probably expressed it best when he said, Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.⁹

This is why the ideal of religious freedom was so essential for America. It was not just so that people could be free to worship as they choose, but it was also to engender a climate in which the virtues of religion could exert their important influence upon the public square. As George Washington observed, "Reason and experience both forbid us to expect that National morality can prevail in exclusion of religious