Today is Religious Freedom Day and President Obama issued a Proclamation to honor the day. The text included atheists as part of the religious diversity and cultural fabric of the United States. He also mentioned the important thing isn’t someone’s faith but that we all should support freedom, equality, justice, and separation of church and state.
Religious Freedom Day marks the day in 1786 when the first religious freedom law – Statute for Religious Freedom – was passed in Virginia.
January 16th is National Religious Freedom Day. The day commemorates the Virginia General Assembly’s adoption of Thomas Jefferson’s landmark Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom on January 16, 1786. The Virginia Statute was the basis of the 1st Amendment of the US Constitution and also can be used to support Jefferson’s idea of the separation of church and state. The Religious Right have of course co-opted the day by mass marketing misleading information about what real religious freedom means in this country. Luckily, Americans United for Separation of Church and State (AU) has some help available to tell the truth.
The Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom was passed at a time when state support and protection of churches was the norm in what would become the United States. Thomas Jefferson offered the statute as a way to protect the church and the state. It is obvious from reading the text that separating church and state was the goal.
I started watching the PBS mini-series “God in America” tonight and while the program claims to be unbiased one of the people interviewed is an old friend of the late Dr. James Kennedy, who holds a limited view of the separation of church and state.
I was zooming the web the other evening for some research when I came across a virtual exhibit on the Library of Congress website. It was titled Religion and the Founding of the American Republic and it piqued my interest, naturally. However after reading the text accompanying the exhibit objects, one would think the authors of the text are spinning history to justify a religious right agenda.
Coach Dave Daubenmire, former London, OH high school football coach and now National Director of Minutemen United and Founder of Pass the Salt Ministries, held a rally in Danbury, Connecticut Tuseday. “Standing on the 1st Amendment promise that ‘Congress shall make no law,’ we declare that Christians, and the Christian God will no longer be pushed back into the church. We believe, as the Founders did, in ‘the free exercise’ of our Faith, unhindered by the unconstitutional restrictions of government. It is our belief that no court decision in the history of America has had a greater impact on the moral condition of this nation than that issued by Justice Black in Everson case of 1947. For sixty years, the mouth of the church has been silenced, as we bought the lie that the church had no voice in the moral/political issues of our day.” – Coach Dave Daubenmire. It is not the first time that Daubenmire has tried to rewrite history. You only have to look at his bio on his ministry website.