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Benjamin Franklin to Richard Price, October 9, 1780

“When a religion is good, I conceive it will support itself, and when it does not support itself, and God does not take care to support it, so that its professors are obliged to call for help of the civil powers, ’tis a sign, I apprehend, of it’s being a bad one.”

Here Franklin articulates a sentiment I came across often from the Founders: the idea that there is a free market of religious ideas, and in that free exchange, strong religions thrive and weak ones die. This sentiment was echoed, too, by Madison, Adams and Jefferson.