Meacham, who is himself a Christian, acknowledges that Christianity has been used as a tool of repression throughout history, but it has also been utilized as a means of liberation and progress, which he hopes means that it can become a force for good again.

While secular people want to see religion banished from the public square, Meacham contends that won’t likely happen due to the iconic figures from the past and present who’ve used religion as a force for good, namely the late John Lewis (D-GA) and the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr — men whose Christian belief “brought America to account on the question of domestic apartheid just over a half century ago.”

Their vision “brought America to account in the mid-1960s — which was, historically speaking, the day before yesterday,” Meacham writes. “It was a religious vision. One need not profess faith in traditional terms to share it, of course; no sect, no nation, has a monopoly on virtue. And as the fourth-century Roman writer Symmachus noted in arguing against Christians who wanted to remove an altar to the pagan deity Victory, ‘We cannot attain to so great a mystery by one way.’”

Read his full op-ed over at the New York Times.