[President Newt Gingrich intends to establish a "Religious Freedom Commission" to oppose separation of church and state.]

Every time America has strayed from the proposition that all men are created by God, and that they are therefore equal, great suffering and turmoil has ensued.

Likewise, every time government oversteps its bounds and exerts control over an individual’s right to freedom of religion and freedom of conscience, or otherwise attempts to usurp his ability to discover truth for himself, it must lie to do so.

A government that prohibits an individual from praying or reading the Bible or displaying religious symbols in public is telling the lie that our Founders intended only certain types of religious expression to be protected.

A government that systematically erodes the people’s ability to make laws based on moral or religious judgment is lying about American history, the rule of law, and the American practice of self-government.

A government that tries to eliminate the concept “under God” from our Pledge of Allegiance as well as our entire political philosophy is lying not only about America’s religious heritage but about the nature of human freedom itself[...]

Today, there are ongoing efforts to remove the constitutional protections of faith and the faithful from our system of government, and to eliminate any public acknowledgment that our liberties come from God. No one should be fooled into believing that this was the intention of our Founding Fathers, nor that doing so will yield anything but a corrupt, despotic government.

The choice before us is whether to accept such a society, or to reaffirm and reassert the truth within our families, our workplaces, and our communities that the cause of human freedom can only be realized in a society that protects, supports, and defends the fundamental rights of freedom of religion and freedom of conscience.

We believe that a presidential commission on religious freedom can play a crucial role in helping our nation’s leaders focus effectively on restoring our ‘noble inheritance’ of religious freedom, which was ‘bought by the toils, and sufferings’ of our ancestors and is simply indispensable to the fulfillment of America’s promise.