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provide services without regard to a person's religious beliefs could receive public funds to help take some of the burden off the government's thinly spread social services. Would that really cross a boundary? One would think that Locke would argue this actually epitomizes just how well government and religion can work together to help their citizens.

The liberal media needs to realize that just because an organization like a daycare, a soup kitchen, or a shelter is affiliated with a church or run by church volunteers, doesn't mean that the service is religious. Locke makes no claims that these religious affiliated organizations need to be separate from the state. In fact, I believe that Locke believed the state had an obligation to its people that it has somehow not fulfilled. The church has stepped in, and the liberal media who on the surface is so concerned with the liberal ideals of helping the poor and advocating for progressive social policies needs to be more grateful than it has been, and stop worrying so much about the separation of church and state in situations that don't involve a religious group trying to convert people into certain affiliations (Henriques & Lehren 3). Rather, they must embrace the good that these religious organizations do and think of ways to better make the playing field more level between organizations of religious affiliation and those without. Only then will we truly see the balance of church and state that Locke laid the foundation for in A Letter Concerning Toleration.

In order to move towards this balance between church and state that Locke advocates for, in addition to reexamining our policies surrounding funding for religious organizations and insisting on more of a balance in the media coverage the issue receives, we must develop what Jim Wallis calls, "the fourth option for American politics" (Wallis 17). Imagine a candidate that provides "the integral link between personal ethics and social justice" (Wallis 20), the candidate that refuses to make the choice between the two. The candidate could be unstoppable in America and exactly the kind of person we need to incorporate morality with progressive politics the kind of candidate that I believe Locke would've voted for. Instead of the two choices that we have historically been given, conservative on all issues or liberal on all issues, Wallis advocates for people who "consider themselves shaped by a strong sense of moral values and long for a political commitment that

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