As we move toward a religiously diverse America, the call to separate religion and politics grows. As Americans head into the future, we are witnessing a tremendous immersion of different religions into one common society. It is becoming a challenge to try to appease and maintain these different religions in the secular social world. For some Americans, the solution is to remove all religious affiliations from the state. After analyzing Wilfred Cantwell Smith's discussion of religious diversity, Maritain's position on the relationship between religion and the secular world, and Hegel's assumption about abstract rights, this common question arises. Should the secular world be isolated from the religious dimensions of human life? With so much religious diversity among groups of people, government policy could function without any religious affiliation and still represent the will of the people as a whole. In the book The Faith of Other Men by Wilfred Cantwell Smith begins by describing his challenge as a teacher in Lahore. He says his colleagues were, like the vast majority of students, a mix of Hindus, Muslims and Sikhs. As a Christian he and the rest of the community were expected to work towards building and maintaining a religiously diverse community. The missionary college emphasized the message that faith was a serious and fundamental issue that could not be taken for granted or neglected. This message for Smith can be echoed in today's oversimplified religious society. The religious life of humanity according to Smith is religiously plural, and this is true for all of us. Muslims, Hindus, Confucians and Buddhists are no longer these distant peoples, but have rather become our neighbors... middle of paper... Hegel fails to speak of the common good/will with religious diversity. (Maritain,14,11-19, 73,75, 76-8) After examining the philosophy of Goerg WF Hegel, Wilfred Cantwell Smith and Jacques Maritain clearly society cannot ignore religion. By ignoring religion, society would consequently neglect the essence that makes the individual a whole. There can never be a society free from religion, nor can religion exist without the secular social world in which they are intertwined. Works Cited Georg W.F. Hegel, Philosophy of Mind: Part Three of the Encyclopedia of the Philosophical Sciences (1830), William Wallace trans, (Oxford: the Clarendon Press, 1971). Jacques Maritain, The Rights of Man and Natural Law, Doris C. Anson trans, (New York: Gordian Press, 1971 [1943]). Wilfred Cantwell Smith, The Faith of Other Men, (New York: New American Library, 1963).