[Federal Register Volume 84, Number 14 (Tuesday, January 22, 2019)]
[Presidential Documents]
[Pages 195-196]
From the Federal Register Online via the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
[FR Doc No: 2019-00092]
Presidential Documents
Federal Register / Vol. 84 , No. 14 / Tuesday, January 22, 2019 /
Presidential Documents
___________________________________________________________________
Title 3--
The President
[[Page 195]]
Proclamation 9836 of January 15, 2019
Religious Freedom Day, 2019
By the President of the United States of America
A Proclamation
On Religious Freedom Day, we celebrate our Nation's
long-standing commitment to freedom of conscience and
the freedom to profess one's own faith. The right to
religious freedom is innate to the dignity of every
human person and is foundational to the pursuit of
truth.
The Pilgrims who landed at Plymouth shared an
experience common to many of America's first settlers:
they had fled their home countries to escape religious
persecution. Aware of this history, our Nation's
Founding Fathers readily understood that a just
government must respect the deep yearning for truth and
openness to the transcendent that are part of the human
spirit. For this reason, from the beginning, our
constitutional republic has endeavored to protect a
robust understanding of religious freedom. On January
16, 1786, Virginia enacted the Statute for Religious
Freedom to protect the right of individual conscience
and religious exercise and to prohibit the compulsory
support of any church. Authored by Thomas Jefferson,
the statute set forth the principle that religious
liberty is an inherent right and not a gift of the
state. Jefferson's statute served as the inspiration
and model for the legal architecture of the conscience
protections in the First Amendment, drafted by James
Madison just a few years later.
Unfortunately, the fundamental human right to religious
freedom is under attack. Efforts to circumscribe
religious freedom--or to separate it from adjoining
civil liberties, like property rights or free speech--
are on the rise. Over time, legislative and political
attacks on religious freedom have given way to actual
violence. Last October, we witnessed a horrific attack
on the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh,
Pennsylvania--the deadliest attack on the Jewish
community in our Nation's history. Tragically, attacks
on people of faith and their houses of worship have
increased in frequency in recent years.
My Administration is taking action to protect religious
liberty and to seek justice against those who seek to
abridge it. The Department of Justice is aggressively
prosecuting those who use violence or threats to
interfere with the religious freedom of their fellow
Americans. In January of 2018, the Justice Department
announced a religious liberty update to the Justice
Manual, raising the profile of religious liberty cases.
Also in January of 2018, the Department of Health and
Human Services undertook major policy changes to
protect religious freedom, including forming a new
Conscience and Religious Freedom Division within the
Department's Office for Civil Rights and proposing a
comprehensive new conscience protection regulation to
reinvigorate enforcement of religious freedom laws
within existing health care programs.
Around the globe today, people are being persecuted for
their faith by authoritarian dictatorships, terrorist
groups, and other intolerant individuals. To address
this tragic reality, last July, at my request, the
Secretary of State convened the first-ever Ministerial
to Advance Religious Freedom. We are listening to the
voices of those risking their lives for their religious
beliefs, and we are listening to the families of people
who have died fighting for their fundamental right of
conscience.
[[Page 196]]
Our Nation was founded on the premise that a just
government abides by the ``Laws of Nature and of
Nature's God.'' As the Founders recognized, the
Constitution protects religious freedom to secure the
rights endowed to man by his very nature. On this day,
we recognize this history and affirm our commitment to
the preservation of religious freedom.
NOW, THEREFORE, I, DONALD J. TRUMP, President of the
United States of America, by virtue of the authority
vested in me by the Constitution and the laws of the
United States, do hereby proclaim January 16, 2019, as
Religious Freedom Day. I call on all Americans to
commemorate this day with events and activities that
remind us of our shared heritage of religious liberty
and that teach us how to secure this blessing both at
home and around the world.
IN WITNESS WHEREOF, I have hereunto set my hand this
fifteenth day of January, in the year of our Lord two
thousand nineteen, and of the Independence of the
United States of America the two hundred and forty-
third.
(Presidential Sig.)
[FR Doc. 2019-00092
Filed 1-18-19; 8:45 am]
Billing code 3295-F9-P