Rawls' Old Time Religion

The Princeton religion department recently discovered in their library John Rawls' senior thesis: "A Brief Inquiry into the Meaning of Sin and Faith: An interpretation based on the concept of community." Although Rawls soon afterward abandoned his faith, the London Times has an excellent (although lengthy) piece by an NYU and a Standford philosophy professors detailing how Rawls' early religion informed his later, well-known, philosophy (i.e."justice as fairness") most famously found in A Theory of Justice (1971).

UPDATE: TNR has a piece on why Rawls' religion may explain some of his "inexplicable" views.