Somewhere between the hotdogs and the burgers today, is our resolute promise to make America be America—to all, and to realize the unfinished experiment.

Since John Winthrop, the Puritan governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, Americans have considered their country to be a shining "city on a hill." This video traces that phrase from Winthrop to contemporary politicians such as Sarah Palin and Newt Gingrich.

See RNS story on "The American Bible."

(RNS) "If you are looking for problematic texts in the Quran, yes, they exist. They also exist in the Bible and Torah and other books," said Emory University's Abdullahi Ahmed An-Na'im. "But Christians aren't judged based on what the Bible said 2,000 years ago, but on how they behave today. Why are Muslims judged according to these literalist interpretations, and not according to how the vast majority of good Muslims behave today?" By Omar Sacirbey.