If virtue is necessary for freedom, what institutions are best equipped to promote virtuous behavior?
America’s founders recognized that local forms of association are the best way for citizens to fulfill their moral obligations to one another. They believed that families, religious congregations, and other institutions of civil society are most effective in uniting their members in cooperative pursuit of the common good and thereby cultivating the indispensable virtues that are the foundation of a healthy democracy. The founders especially emphasized the role of religion in moral formation. The belief in a “God All Powerful wise and good,” claimed James Madison, is “essential to the moral order of the world.” George Washington declared that “reason and experience both forbid us to expect that National morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principle.” Religious communities bind people vertically to God and horizontally to one another. These social bonds not only depend upon, but actually help to generate, trust, cooperation, respect for authority, self-sacrifice, and a shared
