More from the President's Prayer Breakfast remarks

Michael noted the President's remarks at the Prayer Breakfast.  Here's more from those remarks, which were not (hmmm) mentioned in the New York Times piece to which Michael linked:

Yet even as our faith sustains us, it’s also clear that around the world freedom of religion is under threat.  And that is what I want to reflect on this morning.  We see governments engaging in discrimination and violence against the faithful.  We sometimes see religion twisted in an attempt to justify hatred and persecution against other people just because of who they are, or how they pray or who they love.  Old tensions are stoked, fueling conflicts along religious lines, as we’ve seen in the Central African Republic recently, even though to harm anyone in the name of faith is to diminish our own relationship with God.  Extremists succumb to an ignorant nihilism that shows they don’t understand the faiths they claim to profess -- for the killing of the innocent is never fulfilling God’s will; in fact, it’s the ultimate betrayal of God’s will.

Today, we profess the principles we know to be true.  We believe that each of us is “wonderfully made” in the image of God.  We, therefore, believe in the inherent dignity of every human being -- dignity that no earthly power can take away.  And central to that dignity is freedom of religion -- the right of every person to practice their faith how they choose, to change their faith if they choose, or to practice no faith at all, and to do this free from persecution and fear.

This is, of course, great stuff:  "Each of us is 'wonderfully made' in the image of God" . . . the "inherent dignity of every human being."  As Michael Sean Winters points out (here), actions and policies that better reflect these wonderful statements would be welcome.