JFK on separation of church and state

(TM note: here's a quote from a longer post at Hullabaloo....)

Here's Susan Jacoby quoting JFK in her book Freethinkers:

In his celebrated speech to the Greater Houston Ministerial Association on September 12, 1960, Democratic presidential candidate John F. Kennedy declared unequivocally that he believed ...

"... in an America where the separation of church and state is absolute--where no Catholic prelate would tell the President (should he be Catholic) how to act, and no Protestant minister would tell his parishioners for whom to vote--where no church or church school is granted any public funds for policy preference--and where no man is denied public office merely because his religion differs from the President who might appoint him or the people who might elect him."

Kennedy went on to make it clear that he regarded the Jeffersonian wall of separation not as a flexible metaphor but as the foundation of the American system of government. He reminded his audience, composed heavily of evangelical Protestants, that Jefferson's relgious freedom act in Virginia was strongly supported by Baptists who had endured persecution both in England and in America. With a nod to the non-religious, the candidate also expounded his vision of America as a nation "where every man had the same right to attend or not attend the church of his choice."

My how the landscape has changed.