    [Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: William J. Clinton (1993, Book II)]
    [November 16, 1993]
    [Pages 2000-2001]
    [From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]

    Remarks on Signing the Religious Freedom Restoration Act of 1993
    November 16, 1993

        Thank you very much, Mr. Vice President, for those fine remarks and
    to the Members of Congress, the chaplains of the House and the Senate,
    and to all of you who worked so hard to help this day become a reality.
    Let me especially thank the Coalition for the Free Exercise of Religion
    for the central role they played in drafting this legislation and
    working so hard for its passage.
        It is interesting to note, as the Vice President said, what a broad
    coalition of Americans came together to make this bill a reality;
    interesting to note that that coalition produced a 97-to-3 vote in the
    United States Senate and a bill that had such broad support it was
    adopted on a voice vote in the House. I'm told that, as many of the
    people in the coalition worked together across ideological and religious
    lines, some new friendships were formed and some new trust was
    established, which shows, I suppose, that the power of God is such that
    even in the legislative process miracles can happen. [Laughter]
        We all have a shared desire here to protect perhaps the most
    precious of all American liberties, religious freedom. Usually the
    signing of legislation by a President is a ministerial act, often a
    quiet ending to a turbulent legislative process. Today this event
    assumes a more majestic quality because of our ability together to
    affirm the historic role that people of faith have played in the history
    of this country and the constitutional protections those who profess and
    express their faith have always demanded and cherished.
        The power to reverse legislation by legislation, a decision of the
    United States Supreme Court, is a power that is rightly hesitantly and
    infrequently exercised by the United States Congress. But this is an
    issue in which that extraordinary measure was clearly called for. As the
    Vice President said, this act reverses the Supreme Court's decision
    Employment Division against Smith and reestablishes a standard that
    better protects all Americans of all faiths in the exercise of their
    religion in a way that I am convinced is far more consistent with the
    intent of the Founders of this Nation than the Supreme Court decision.
        More than 50 cases have been decided against individuals making
    religious claims against Government action since that decision was
    handed down. This act will help to reverse that trend by honoring the
    principle that our laws and institutions should not impede or hinder but
    rather should protect and preserve fundamental religious liberties.
        The free exercise of religion has been called the first freedom,
    that which originally sparked the development of the full range of the
    Bill of Rights. Our Founders cared a lot about religion. And one of the
    reasons they worked so hard to get the first amendment into the Bill of
    Rights at the head of the class is that they well understood what could
    happen to this country, how both religion and Government could be
    perverted if there were not some space created and some protection
    provided. They knew that religion helps to give our people the character
    without which a democracy cannot survive. They knew that there needed to
    be a space of freedom between Government and people of faith that
    otherwise Government might usurp.
        They have seen now, all of us, that religion

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    and religious institutions have brought forth faith and discipline,
    community and responsibility over two centuries for ourselves and
    enabled us to live together in ways that I believe would not have been
    possible. We are, after all, the oldest democracy now in history and
    probably the most truly multiethnic society on the face of the Earth.
    And I am convinced that neither one of those things would be true today
    had it not been for the importance of the first amendment and the fact
    that we have kept faith with it for 200 years.
        What this law basically says is that the Government should be held
    to a very high level of proof before it interferes with someone's free
    exercise of religion. This judgment is shared by the people of the
    United States as well as by the Congress. We believe strongly that we
    can never, we can never be too vigilant in this work.
        Let me make one other comment if I might before I close and sit down
    and sign this bill. There is a great debate now abroad in the land which
    finds itself injected into several political races about the extent to
    which people of faith can seek to do God's will as political actors. I
    would like to come down on the side of encouraging everybody to act on
    what they believe is the right thing to do. There are many people in
    this country who strenuously disagree with me on what they believe are
    the strongest grounds of their faiths. I encourage them to speak out. I
    encourage all Americans to reach deep inside to try to determine what it
    is that drives their lives most deeply.
        As many of you know, I have been quite moved by Stephen Carter's
    book, ``The Culture of Disbelief.'' He makes a compelling case that
    today Americans of all political persuasions and all regions have
    created a climate in this country in which some people believe that they
    are embarrassed to say that they advocate a course of action simply
    because they believe it is the right thing to do, because they believe
    it is dictated by their faith, by what they discern to be, with their
    best efforts, the will of God.
        I submit to you today, my fellow Americans, that we can stand that
    kind of debate in this country. We are living in a country where the
    most central institution of our society, the family, has been under
    assault for 30 years. We are living in a country in which 160,000
    schoolchildren don't go to school every day because they're afraid
    someone will shoot them or beat them up or knife them. We are living in
    a country now where gunshots are the single leading cause of death among
    teenage boys. We are living in a country where people can find
    themselves shot in the crossfire of teenagers who are often better armed
    than the police who are trying to protect other people from illegal
    conduct. It is high time we had an open and honest reaffirmation of the
    role of American citizens of faith, not so that we can agree but so that
    we can argue and discourse and seek the truth and seek to heal this
    troubled land.
        So today I ask you to also think of that. We are a people of faith.
    We have been so secure in that faith that we have enshrined in our
    Constitution protection for people who profess no faith. And good for us
    for doing so. That is what the first amendment is all about. But let us
    never believe that the freedom of religion imposes on any of us some
    responsibility to run from our convictions. Let us instead respect one
    another's faiths, fight to the death to preserve the right of every
    American to practice whatever convictions he or she has, but bring our
    values back to the table of American discourse to heal our troubled
    land.
        Thank you very much.

    Note: The President spoke at 9:15 a.m. on the South Lawn at the White
    House. H.R. 1308, approved November 16, was assigned Public Law No. 103-
    141.