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>> There's a fascinating tension going on in Texas right now
in the religious realm.
The culture is becoming as heterogeneous
as it possibly can be, and you really have to go to Houston
to understand or to Dallas, you know, people think about Texas
as a rural, no it's the second, is the second
or the first most urban, it's either, maybe well either,
the most urban nation, or yeah it's just incredible the
distinction between-- between what we think Texas is
and what it really is, but that religious heterogeneity
in the big cities and even the smart house,
it's just truly extraordinary and over the years,
Texans just like Americans, have come to understand
that they have to learn how to live with each other.
Americans first learned how to live with each other
in the religious realm, which at the time in the 17th
and 18th century was quite simply the most important
of the human condition, it's not a trivial thing
and we did a good job of it I think.
We didn't do it very, we didn't do it very graciously,
reluctantly, but we decided that in order
to have our own religious beliefs tolerated,
we had to tolerate other people's religious beliefs even
if we knew that they were going to go straight to hell
for going, for believing them.
That toleration is one of the hallmarks
of the religious culture of this state, and this goes back
to something I said earlier, that the men
who created the state understood that religion is a source
of power, a powerful source of contention and even violence.
