Republican presidential candidate and former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney speaks later today at the George H.W. Bush Presidential Library in College Station, Texas in an address on his view of the role of religious faith in American public life. Following are excerpts from the Romney speech:

“There are some who may feel that religion is not a matter to be seriously considered in the context of the weighty threats that face us.  If so, they are at odds with the nation’s founders, for they, when our nation faced its greatest peril, sought the blessings of the Creator.  And further, they discovered the essential connection between the survival of a free land and the protection of religious freedom.  In John Adam’s words: ‘We have no government armed with power capable of contending with human passions unbridled by morality and religion… Our constitution was made for a moral and religious people.’