Religious Freedom

Well, at least they're honest. Here's what's in the constitution:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.

But Michael Novak tells us that religious liberty is only about Jewish or Christian religious liberty.

In addition, the defense that both Jefferson and Madison gave of the right to religious liberty depends crucially on a specifically Jewish and Christian concept of God. Theirs is not a Hindu, Buddhist, or Muslim concept, let alone the concept of God in Aristotle or Plato, Kant or Leibniz. It is the concept of a God who reads our intentions, hearts, and consciences, not just our outward behavior. This God demands to be worshiped in spirit and in truth. This God singles us out one by one, and renders the arena in which He meets the individual conscience sacred.

UPDATE: According to Jefferson himself (via comments over at Big Media Matt's place):

The bill for establishing religious freedom, the principles of which had, to a certain degree, been enacted before, I had drawn in all the latitude of reason and right. It still met with opposition; but, with some mutilations in the preamble, it was finally passed; and a singular proposition proved that its protection of opinion was meant to be universal. Where the preamble declares, that coercion is a departure from the plan of the holy author of our religion, an amendment was proposed, by inserting the word "Jesus Christ," so that it should read, "a departure from the plan of Jesus Christ, the holy author of our religion;" the insertion was rejected by a great majority, in proof that they meant to comprehend, within the mantle of its protection, the Jew and the Gentile, the Christian and Mahometan, the Hindoo, and Infidel of every denomination.

Novak goes on to say:

Are we to understand the Democrats as asserting that only religious people who have "shallowly held" beliefs are reliable as judges? Will judges of "shallow" beliefs have the courage to override their own feelings in order to apply the law impartially?

Let's remember the words of one man with deeply held religious views, Antonin Scalia:

I pause here to emphasize the point that in my view the choice for the judge who believes the death penalty to be immoral is resignation, rather than simply ignoring duly enacted, constitutional laws and sabotaging death penalty cases. He has, after all, taken an oath to apply the laws and has been given no power to supplant them with rules of his own. Of course if he feels strongly enough he can go beyond mere resignation and lead a political campaign to abolish the death penalty—and if that fails, lead a revolution. But rewrite the laws he cannot do.

Anyone who continues to scream anti-Catholic bias - take it up with the very Catholic Antonin Scalia, who goes against his own church on this one. According to Scalia, Pryor is unfit to be a judge.

UPDATE: For the nuisances who think that that Scalia isn't really going against his own church, the man himself says:

It will come as no surprise from what I have said that I do not agree with the encyclical Evangelium Vitae and the new Catholic catechism (or the very latest version of the new Catholic catechism), according to which the death penalty can only be imposed to protect rather than avenge, and that since it is (in most modern societies) not necessary for the former purpose, it is wrong.