In 1944, a grass roots movement in the Old North neighborhood of Dayton, Ohio, built a monument. They raised money door to door to honor all its members who had fought or were fighting for America. The final fund-raising drive that put this non-government-run project over the top was carried out by hundreds of neighborhood school children. What began as a local effort attracted city-wide attention. The unity the people felt, bound together by the nationwide war effort, inspired them to create a tangible sign of being one nation. Though the neighborhood that started this project was mostly Catholic, they invited a Protestant minister and a rabbi along with a priest to join when they set a time capsule in the monument, each faith leader contributing to posterity the Bible version used by his faith community.  We all derive our rights from God, not by the indulgence of any other person or their beliefs. On Flag Day, 2026, the day this article will be published online, a minister, a priest, and a rabbi are coming together as the time capsule of 1944 will be opened, as the Dayton area marks the completion of another grass-roots effort: restoring the monument after 82 years. Each of the three faith leaders will offer an invocation as part of the celebration, again evoking that spirit that continues to bind us together as Americans. It’s right to realize as we approach our nation’s 250th birthday that having clergy of different faiths join together publicly to express national unity was something very new and noteworthy in the earliest days of our Republic. There was no joke genre of a rabbi, a priest, and a minister going into a bar or anywhere else. To the contrary, religion had a worldwide history of ripping countries and continents to bloody shreds. It was too often invoked to make any conflict an existential struggle.  But America from its start was different. Founder Dr. Benjamin Rush wrote in a Pennsylvania newspaper his reflections on the Independence Day parade in Philadelphia a single week after the Constitution had come into effect in the summer of 1787: The Clergy formed a very agreeable part of the Procession — They manifested, by their attendance, their sense of the connection between religion and good government…. Four and five of them marched arm in arm with each other, to exemplify the Union. Pains were taken to connect Ministers of the most dissimilar religious principles together, thereby to show the influence of a free government in promoting christian [spelling in the original] charity. The Rabbi of the Jews, locked in the arms of two ministers of the gospel, was a most delightful sight. There could not have been a more happy [sic] emblem contrived, of that section of the new constitution, which opens all its power and offices alike, not only to every sect of christians, but to worthy men of every religion. Lest anyone think that Dr. Rush was not representative of the spirit of the country at the Founding, we need to recognize that this was a major and growing theme of America in its formation. The parade Rush was observing took place in the Keystone State, the place in which the Declaration and the Constitution were thrashed out, and where America’s first capital was set. Its founder, William Penn, was a Quaker who had been dragged before a British court for his religion. He had made a powerful plea that his indictment was unconstitutional since religious freedom is a most basic liberty and the proper birthright of every Englishman: If these ancient fundamental laws, which relate to liberty and property, (and are not limited to particular persuasions in matters of religion) must not be indispensably maintained and observed, who can say he hath right to the coat upon his back? The king got rid of Penn by sending him across the ocean — exile in the form of a promotion. Penn, though, saw it as providential. He founded Pennsylvania to be what he called “a Holy Experiment” in which that freedom of religion which he had defended established in law as the God-given right he believed it to be. Pennsylvania was among the first of the states to ratify the Constitution. Rhode Island was the last of the original 13. Rhode Island had been founded by Roger Williams, who broke away from Massachusetts largely because of the intolerance of that colony that would make a name for itself by burning witches, hanging Quakers, and not allowing Jews full rights until the 19th century. In stating the principles they required of the Constitution, Rhode Island officially set out a bill of rights of their own, a year before what we know as the Bill of Rights was ratified. The 1790 Rhode Island version contained this strong statement: That religion, or the duty which we owe to our Creator and the manner of discharging it can be directed only by reason and conviction, and not by force or violence — and therefore all men, have an equal, natural, and unalienable right to the free exercise of religion according to the dictates of conscience; and that no particular religious sect or society ought to be favored or established by law in preference to others.   It is to Rhode Island that President Washington went when it finally ratified the Constitution that summer. It is the home till today of the oldest American synagogue building, and the Jewish congregation of Newport addressed a letter to him on the occasion, as we have recounted in this space several times. It is necessary in these times when certain public figures have displayed contempt and ignorance of this crucial and central part of our holy American experiment. With the possible exception of John Adams (whose expressed his respect and admiration of the Jews in memorable language), no one was more central to the birth of this nation than George Washington. Therefore, his words on the topic of American religious freedom should rivet our attention. Here in his reply to Newport’s Jews, Washington pinpoints the nub of the matter: It is now no more that toleration is spoken of as if it were the indulgence of one class of people that another enjoyed the exercise of their inherent natural rights, for, happily, the Government of the United States, which gives to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance, requires only that they who live under its protection should demean themselves as good citizens in giving it on all occasions their effectual support. This is the authentic American way, expressed memorably by the clergy in Philadelphia marching arm in arm. We all derive our rights from God, not by the indulgence of any other person or their beliefs. It is sometimes overlooked that Washington concluded his memorable letter to the Newport congregation with a prayer in which soulful emotion and a memorable seriousness form a seamless whole: May the father of all mercies scatter light, and not darkness, upon our paths, and make us all in our several vocations useful here, and in His own due time and way everlastingly happy. Here is the true American vision, in which we all are united under the Providence that brought this nation to birth 250 years ago. May our own lives answer this prayer with a resounding Amen.  READ MORE from Shmuel Klatzkin: The Color of Justice When Words Lose Their Meaning The Stories That Saved the West