Today is National Religious Freedom Day. Thanks to Thomas Jefferson, the First Amendment, and the people who fight every day to protect religious liberty, Religious Freedom Day has been proclaimed annually since 1993.
This day honors the date the Virginia General Assembly adopted Jefferson’s “Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom” in 1786. Though it took seven years to get through the legislature, it provided the basis for the free exercise and establishment clauses in the First Amendment, which were eventually written into the Bill of Rights and ratified just five years later.
To religious liberty advocates in the public square, every day is quite literally Religious Freedom Day. Despite the fact that such liberty is clearly protected in our founding documents, the right is challenged often and rigorously. Some might find that unfortunate, but I think it’s a sign of a healthy, robust democratic republic.
Alliance Defending Freedom is an organization at the forefront of religious liberty battles waged in workplaces and schools nationwide. ADF Senior Vice President Kristen Waggoner, one of the attorneys who defended Christian baker Jack Phillips at the Supreme Court, described to me the importance of this day:
One of the many reasons conservatives voted for Trump, despite his background clearly lacking moral integrity and political experience, to say the least, was that most believed he would support traditional conservative beliefs, including religious liberty. Despite impeachment proceedings, a penchant for tweeting explosive things, and even succumbing to the spiritual advisership of cringeworthy prosperity-gospel goddess Paula White, Trump has kept his word protecting religious liberty.
Jeremy Dys of First Liberty, a Texas-based legal organization that specializes in First Amendment cases, told me: “No one can dispute that the Trump administration has worked to fulfill the mandate the nation sent with President Trump to Washington, D.C. — protect our first freedom, religious freedom. Preserving religious liberty for all Americans is not only required by the Constitution, it is the right thing to do for your neighbor.”
No matter which party controls the White House, religious freedom will remain under attack, and defending it will be a priority for many Americans. Thanks to Jefferson’s foresight, these rights have been etched into American society for centuries. And thanks to lovers of liberty today, these rights continue to be defended zealously across the country.
“The last decade brought us significant victories for religious liberty: protections for Muslim prisoners, for Native American tribes from government agencies, for closely held businesses and the Little Sisters of the Poor; and the list goes on,” the religious liberty legal organization Becket’s Montse Alvarado told me. “This day serves as a reminder that the public square needs people of faith to continue to confidently live this important right guaranteed in the First Amendment. Rights mean nothing unless we use them.”
Nicole Russell (@russell_nm) is a contributor to the Washington Examiner’s Beltway Confidential blog. She is a journalist who previously worked in Republican politics in Minnesota.
