[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.