    [Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: William J. Clinton (1995, Book II)]
    [July 12, 1995]
    [Pages 1075-1083]
    [From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]

    Remarks at James Madison High School in Vienna, Virginia
    July 12, 1995

        Thank you, Secretary Riley, for the introduction but more for your
    outstanding leadership of the Department of Education and the work you
    have done not only to increase the investment of our country in
    education but also to lift the quality and the standards of education
    and to deal forthrightly with some of the more difficult but important
    issues in education that go to the heart of the character of the young
    people we build in our country. Superintendent Spillane, congratulations
    on your award and the work you are doing here in this district. Dr.
    Clark, Ms. Lubetkin, to Danny Murphy--I thought he gave such a good
    speech I could imagine him on a lot of platforms in the years ahead.
    [Laughter] He did a very fine job. Mayor

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    Robinson and to the Board of Supervisors Chair Katherine Hanley and to
    all the religious leaders, parents, students who are here; the teachers;
    and especially to the James Madison teachers, thank you for coming
    today.
        Last week at my alma mater, Georgetown, I had a chance to do
    something that I hope to do more often as President, to have a genuine
    conversation with the American people about the best way for us to move
    forward as a nation and to resolve some of the great questions that are
    nagging us today. I believe, as I have said repeatedly, that our Nation
    faces two great challenges: first of all, to restore the American dream
    of opportunity and the American tradition of responsibility; and second,
    to bring our country together amidst all of our diversity in a stronger
    community so that we can find common ground and move forward together.
        In my first 2 years as President, I worked harder on the first
    question, how to get the economy going, how to deal with the specific
    problems of the country, how to inspire more responsibility through
    things like welfare reform and child support enforcement. But I have
    come to believe that unless we can solve the second problem we'll never
    really solve the first one. Unless we can find a way to honestly and
    openly debate our differences and find common ground, to celebrate all
    the diversity of America and still give people a chance to live in the
    way they think is right, so that we are stronger for our differences,
    not weaker, we won't be able to meet the economic and other challenges
    before us. And therefore, I have decided that I should spend some more
    time in some conversations about things Americans care a lot about and
    that they're deeply divided over.
        Today I want to talk about a subject that can provoke a fight in
    nearly any country town or on any city street corner in America,
    religion. It's a subject that should not drive us apart. And we have a
    mechanism as old as our Constitution for bringing us together.
        This country, after all, was founded by people of profound faith who
    mentioned Divine Providence and the guidance of God twice in the
    Declaration of Independence. They were searching for a place to express
    their faith freely without persecution. We take it for granted today
    that that's so in this country, but it was not always so. And it
    certainly has not always been so across the world. Many of the people
    who were our first settlers came here primarily because they were
    looking for a place where they could practice their faith without being
    persecuted by the Government.
        Here in Virginia's soil, as the Secretary of Education has said, the
    oldest and deepest roots of religious liberty can be found. The first
    amendment was modeled on Thomas Jefferson's Statutes of Religious
    Liberty for Virginia. He thought so much of it that he asked that on his
    gravestone it be said not that he was President, not that he had been
    Vice President or Secretary of State but that he was the founder of the
    University of Virginia, the author of the Declaration of Independence,
    and the author of the Statutes of Religious Liberty for the State of
    Virginia. And of course, no one did more than James Madison to put the
    entire Bill of Rights in our Constitution and, especially, the first
    amendment.
        Religious freedom is literally our first freedom. It is the first
    thing mentioned in the Declaration of Independence. And as it opens, it
    says Congress cannot make a law that either establishes a religion or
    restricts the free exercise of religion. Now, as with every provision of
    our Constitution, that law has had to be interpreted over the years, and
    it has in various ways that some of us agree with and some of us
    disagree with. But one thing is indisputable: The first amendment has
    protected our freedom to be religious or not religious, as we choose,
    with the consequence that in this highly secular age the United States
    is clearly the most conventionally religious country in the entire
    world, at least the entire industrialized world. We have more than
    250,000 places of worship. More people go to church here every week or
    to synagogue or to their mosque or other place of worship than in any
    other country in the world. More peoples believe religion is directly
    important to their lives than in any other advanced, industrialized
    country in the world. And it is not an accident. It is something that
    has always been a part of our life.
        I grew up in Arkansas which is, except for West Virginia, probably
    the State that's most heavily Southern Baptist Protestant in the
    country. But we had two synagogues and a Greek Orthodox church in my
    hometown. Not so long ago, in the heart of our agricultural country in
    eastern Arkansas, one of our universities did a big outreach to students
    in the Middle East. And before you know it, out there on this flat land
    where there was no building more than

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    two stories high, there rose a great mosque. And all the farmers from
    miles around drove in to see what the mosque was like and try to figure
    out what was going on there. [Laughter]
        This is a remarkable country. And I have tried to be faithful to
    that tradition that we have of the first amendment. It's something
    that's very important to me.
        Secretary Riley mentioned when I was at Georgetown--Georgetown is a
    Jesuit school, a Catholic school. All the Catholics were required to
    take theology, and those of us who weren't Catholic took a course in the
    world's religion, which we called Buddhism for Baptists. [Laughter] And
    I began a sort of love affair with the religions that I did not know
    anything about before that time.
        It's a personal thing to me because of my own religious faith and
    the faith of my family. And I've always felt that in order for me to be
    free to practice my faith in this country, I had to let other people be
    as free as possible to practice theirs, and that the Government had an
    extraordinary obligation to bend over backwards not to do anything to
    impose any set of views on any group of people or to allow others to do
    it under the cover of law.
        That's why I was very proud--one of the proudest things I've been
    able to do as President was to sign into law the Religious Freedom
    Restoration Act in 1993. And it was designed to reverse the decision of
    the Supreme Court that essentially made it pretty easy for Government,
    in the pursuit of its legitimate objectives, to restrict the exercise of
    people's religious liberties. This law basically said--I won't use the
    legalese--the bottom line was that if the Government is going to
    restrict anybody's legitimate exercise of religion they have to have an
    extraordinarily good reason and no other way to achieve their compelling
    objective other than to do this. You have to bend over backwards to
    avoid getting in the way of people's legitimate exercise of their
    religious convictions. That's what that law said.
        This is something I've tried to do throughout my career. When I was
    Governor, for example, we were having--of Arkansas in the eighties--you
    may remember this--there were religious leaders going to jail in America
    because they ran child care centers that they refused to have certified
    by the State because they said it undermined their ministry. We solved
    that problem in our State. There were people who were prepared to go to
    jail over the home schooling issue in the eighties because they said it
    was part of their religious ministry. We solved that problem in our
    State.
        With the Religious Freedom Restoration Act we made it possible,
    clearly, in areas that were previously ambiguous for Native Americans,
    for American Jews, for Muslims to practice the full range of their
    religious practices when they might have otherwise come in contact with
    some governmental regulation.
        And in a case that was quite important to the evangelicals in our
    country, I instructed the Justice Department to change our position
    after the law passed on a tithing case where a family had been tithing
    to their church and the man declared bankruptcy, and the Government took
    the position they could go get the money away from the church because he
    knew he was bankrupt at the time he gave it. And I realized in some ways
    that was a close question, but I thought we had to stand up for the
    proposition that people should be able to practice their religious
    convictions.
        Secretary Riley and I, in another context, have also learned as we
    have gone along in this work that all the religions obviously share a
    certain devotion to a certain set of values which make a big difference
    in the schools. I want to commend Secretary Riley for his relentless
    support of the so-called character education movement in our schools,
    which is clearly led in many schools that had great troubles to reduce
    dropout rates, increased performance in schools, better citizenship in
    ways that didn't promote any particular religious views but at least
    unapologetically advocated values shared by all major religions.
        In this school, one of the reasons I wanted to come here is because
    I recognize that this work has been done here. There's a course in this
    school called combating intolerance, which deals not only with racial
    issues but also with religious differences, and studies times in the
    past when people have been killed in mass numbers and persecuted because
    of their religious convictions.
        You can make a compelling argument that the tragic war in Bosnia
    today is more of a religious war than an ethnic war. The truth is,
    biologically, there is no difference in the Serbs, the Croats, and the
    Muslims. They are Catholics, Orthodox Christians, and Muslims, and they

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    are so for historic reasons. But it's really more of a religious war
    than an ethnic war when properly viewed. And I think it's very important
    that the people in this school are learning that and, in the process,
    will come back to the distilled essence that every great religion
    teaches honesty and trustworthiness and responsibility and devotion to
    family and charity and compassion toward others.
        Our sense of our own religion and our respect for others has really
    helped us to work together for two centuries. It's made a big difference
    in the way we live and the way we function and our ability to overcome
    adversity. The Constitution wouldn't be what it is without James
    Madison's religious values. But it's also, frankly, given us a lot of
    elbow room. I remember, for example, that Abraham Lincoln was derided by
    his opponents because he belonged to no organized church. But if you
    read his writings and you study what happened to him, especially after
    he came to the White House, he might have had more spiritual depth than
    any person ever to hold the office that I now have the privilege to
    occupy.
        So we have followed this balance, and it has served us well. Now
    what I want to talk to you about for a minute is that our Founders
    understood that religious freedom basically was a coin with two sides.
    The Constitution protected the free exercise of religion but prohibited
    the establishment of religion. It's a careful balance that's uniquely
    American. It is the genius of the first amendment. It does not, as some
    people have implied, make us a religion-free country. It has made us the
    most religious country in the world.
        It does not convert--let's just take the areas of greatest
    controversy now. All the fights have come over 200 years over what those
    two things mean: What does it mean for the Government to establish a
    religion, and what does it mean for a government to interfere with the
    free exercise of religion. The Religious Freedom Restoration Act was
    designed to clarify the second provision, Government interfering with
    the free exercise of religion and to say you can do that almost never.
    You can do that almost never.
        We have had a lot more fights in the last 30 years over what the
    Government establishment of religion means. And that's what the whole
    debate is now over the issue of school prayer, religious practices in
    the schools, and things of that kind. And I want to talk about it
    because our schools are the places where so much of our hearts in
    America and all of our futures are. And I'd like to begin by just sort
    of pointing out what's going on today and then discussing it if I could.
    And again, this is always kind of inflammatory; I want to have a
    noninflammatory talk about it. [Laughter]
        First of all, let me tell you a little about my personal history.
    Before the Supreme Court's decision in Engel against Vitale, which said
    that the State of New York could not write a prayer that had to be said
    in every school in New York every day, school prayer was as common as
    apple pie in my hometown. And when I was in junior high school, it was
    my responsibility either to start every day by reading the Bible or get
    somebody else to do it. Needless to say, I exerted a lot of energy in
    finding someone else to do it from time to time, being a normal 13-year-
    old boy. [Laughter]
        Now, you could say, ``Well, it certainly didn't do any harm. It
    might have done a little good.'' But remember what I told you. We had
    two synagogues in my hometown. We also had pretended to be deeply
    religious, and there were no blacks in my school. They were in a
    segregated school. And I can tell you that all of us who were in there
    doing it never gave a second thought most of the time to the fact that
    we didn't have blacks in our schools and that there were Jews in the
    classroom who were probably deeply offended by half the stuff we were
    saying or doing or maybe made to feel inferior.
        I say that to make the point that we have not become less religious
    over the last 30 years by saying that schools cannot impose a particular
    religion, even if it's a Christian religion and 98 percent of the kids
    in the schools are Christian and Protestant. I'm not sure the Catholics
    were always comfortable with what we did either. We had a big Catholic
    population in my school and in my hometown. But I did that; I have been
    a part of this debate we are talking about. This is a part of my
    personal life experience. So I have seen a lot of progress made, and I
    agreed with the Supreme Court's original decision in Engel v. Vitale.
        Now since then, I've not always agreed with every decision the
    Supreme Court made in the area of the first amendment. I said the other
    day I didn't think the decision on the prayer at the commencement, where
    the rabbi was asked to give the nonsectarian prayer at the

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    commencement--I didn't agree with that because I didn't think it any
    coercion at all. And I thought that people were not interfered with. And
    I didn't think it amounted to the establishment of a religious practice
    by the Government. So I have not always agreed.
        But I do believe that on balance, the direction of the first
    amendment has been very good for America and has made us the most
    religious country in the world by keeping the Government out of creating
    religion, supporting particular religions, interfering, and interfering
    with other people's religious practices.
        What is giving rise to so much of this debate today I think is two
    things. One is the feeling that the schools are special and a lot of
    kids are in trouble, and a lot of kids are in trouble for nonacademic
    reasons, and we want our kids to have good values and have a good
    future.
        Let me give you just one example. There is today, being released, a
    new study of drug use among young people by the group that Joe Califano
    was associated with, Council for a Drug-Free America, massive poll of
    young people themselves. It's a fascinating study, and I urge all of you
    to get it. Joe came in a couple of days ago and briefed me on it. It
    shows disturbingly that even though serious drug use is down overall in
    groups in America, casual drug use is coming back up among some of our
    young people who no longer believe that it's dangerous and have
    forgotten that it's wrong and are basically living in a world that I
    think is very destructive.
        And I see it all the time. It's coming back up, even though we're
    investing money and trying to combat it in education and treatment
    programs and supporting things like the D.A.R.E. program. And we're
    breaking more drug rings than ever before around the world. It's
    almost--it's very disturbing because it's fundamentally something that
    is kind of creeping back in.
        But the study shows that there are three major causes for young
    people not using drugs. One is they believe that their future depends
    upon their not doing it; they're optimistic about the future. The more
    optimistic kids are about the future, the less likely they are to use
    drugs. Second is having a strong, positive relationship with their
    parents. The closer kids are to their parents and the more tuned in to
    them they are and the more their parents are good role models, the less
    likely kids are to use drugs. You know what the third is? How religious
    the children are. The more religious the children are, the less likely
    they are to use drugs.
        So what's the big fight over religion in the schools, and what does
    it mean to us and why are people so upset about it? I think there are
    basically three reasons. One is, people believe that--most Americans
    believe that if you're religious, personally religious, you ought to be
    able to manifest that anywhere at any time, in a public or private
    place. Second, I think that most Americans are disturbed if they think
    that our Government is becoming antireligious, instead of adhering to
    the firm spirit of the first amendment: don't establish, don't interfere
    with, but respect. And the third thing is people worry about our
    national character as manifest in the lives of our children. The crime
    rate is going down in almost every major area in America today, but the
    rate of violent random crime among very young people is still going up.
        So these questions take on a certain urgency today for personal
    reasons and for larger social reasons. And this old debate that Madison
    and Jefferson started over 200 years ago is still being spun out today,
    especially as it relates to what can and cannot be done in our schools,
    and the whole question, specific question, of school prayer, although I
    would argue it goes way beyond that.
        So let me tell you what I think the law is and what we're trying to
    do about it, since I like the first amendment, and I think we're better
    off because of it, and I think that if you have two great pillars--the
    Government can't establish and the Government can't interfere with--
    obviously there are going to be a thousand different factual cases that
    will arise at any given time, and the courts from time to time will make
    decisions that we don't all agree with. But the question is, are the
    pillars the right pillars, and do we more or less come out in the right
    place over the long run?
        The Supreme Court is like everybody else. It's imperfect, and so are
    we. Maybe they're right, and we're wrong. But we are going to have these
    differences. The fundamental balance that has been struck, it seems to
    me, has been very good for America. But what is not good today is that
    people assume that there is a positive antireligious bias in the
    cumulative impact of these court decisions with which our
    administration, the Justice Department and the Secretary of Education
    and the President, strongly

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    disagree. So let me tell you what I think the law is today and what I
    have instructed the Department of Education and the Department of
    Justice to do about it.
        The first amendment does not--I will say again--does not convert our
    schools into religion-free zones. If a student is told he can't wear a
    yarmulke, for example, we have an obligation to tell the school the law
    says the student can, most definitely, wear a yarmulke to school. If a
    student is told she cannot bring a Bible to school, we have to tell the
    school, no, the law guarantees her the right to bring the Bible to
    school.
        There are those who do believe our schools should be value-neutral
    and that religion has no place inside the schools. But I think that
    wrongly interprets the idea of the wall between church and state. They
    are not the walls of the school.
        There are those who say that values and morals and religions have no
    place in public education; I think that is wrong. First of all, the
    consequences of having no values are not neutral, the violence in our
    streets--not value neutral. The movies we see aren't value neutral.
    Television is not value neutral. Too often we see expressions of human
    degradation, immorality, violence, and debasement of the human soul that
    have more influence and take more time and occupy more space in the
    minds of our young people than any of the influences that are felt at
    school anyway. Our schools, therefore, must be a barricade against this
    kind of degradation. And we can do it without violating the first
    amendment.
        I am deeply troubled that so many Americans feel that their faith is
    threatened by the mechanisms that are designed to protect their faith.
    Over the past decade we have seen a real rise in these kind of cultural
    tensions in America. Some people even say we have a culture war. There
    have been books written about culture war, the culture of disbelief, all
    these sort of trends arguing that many Americans genuinely feel that a
    lot of our social problems today have arisen in large measure because
    the country led by the Government has made an assault on religious
    convictions. That is fueling a lot of this debate today over what can
    and cannot be done in the schools.
        Much of the tension stems from the idea that religion is simply not
    welcome at all in what Professor Carter at Yale has called the public
    square. Americans feel that instead of celebrating their love for God in
    public, they're being forced to hide their faith behind closed doors.
    That's wrong. Americans should never have to hide their faith. But some
    Americans have been denied the right to express their religion, and that
    has to stop. That has happened, and it has to stop. It is crucial that
    Government does not dictate or demand specific religious views, but
    equally crucial that Government doesn't prevent the expression of
    specific religious views.
        When the first amendment is invoked as an obstacle to private
    expression of religion, it is being misused. Religion has a proper place
    in private and a proper place in public because the public square
    belongs to all Americans. It's especially important that parents feel
    confident that their children can practice religion. That's why some
    families have been frustrated to see their children denied even the most
    private forms of religious expression in public schools. It is rare, but
    these things have actually happened.
        I know that most schools do a very good job of protecting students'
    religious rights, but some students in America have been prohibited from
    reading the Bible silently in study hall. Some student religious groups
    haven't been allowed to publicize their meetings in the same way that
    nonreligious groups can. Some students have been prevented even from
    saying grace before lunch. That is rare, but it has happened and it is
    wrong. Wherever and whenever the religious rights of children are
    threatened or suppressed, we must move quickly to correct it. We want to
    make it easier and more acceptable for people to express and to
    celebrate their faith.
        Now, just because the first amendment sometimes gets the balance a
    little bit wrong in specific decisions by specific people doesn't mean
    there's anything wrong with the first amendment. I still believe the
    first amendment as it is presently written permits the American people
    to do what they need to do. That's what I believe. Let me give you some
    examples, and you see if you agree.
        First of all, the first amendment does not require students to leave
    their religion at the schoolhouse door. We wouldn't want students to
    leave the values they learn from religion, like honesty and sharing and
    kindness, behind at the schoolhouse door, and reinforcing those

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    values is an important part of every school's mission.
        Some school officials and teachers and parents believe that the
    Constitution forbids any religions expression at all in public schools.
    That is wrong. Our courts have made it clear that that is wrong. It is
    also not a good idea. Religion is too important to our history and our
    heritage for us to keep it out of our schools. Once again, it shouldn't
    be demanded, but as long as it is not sponsored by school officials and
    doesn't interfere with other children's rights, it mustn't be denied.
        For example, students can pray privately and individually whenever
    they want. They can say grace themselves before lunch. There are times
    when they can pray out loud together. Student religious clubs in high
    schools can and should be treated just like any other extracurricular
    club. They can advertise their meetings, meet on school grounds, use
    school facilities just as other clubs can. When students can choose to
    read a book to themselves, they have every right to read the Bible or
    any other religious text they want.
        Teachers can and certainly should teach about religion and the
    contributions it has made to our history, our values, our knowledge, to
    our music and our art in our country and around the world, and to the
    development of the kind of people we are. Students can also pray to
    themselves--preferably before tests, as I used to do. [Laughter]
        Students should feel free to express their religion and their
    beliefs in homework, through art work, during class presentations, as
    long as it's relevant to the assignment. If students can distribute
    flyers or pamphlets that have nothing to do with the school, they can
    distribute religious flyers and pamphlets on the same basis. If students
    can wear T-shirts advertising sports teams, rock groups, or politicians,
    they can also wear T-shirts that promote religion. If certain subjects
    or activities are objectionable to their students or their parents
    because of their religious beliefs, then schools may, and sometimes they
    must, excuse the students from those activities.
        Finally, even though the schools can't advocate religious beliefs,
    as I said earlier, they should teach mainstream values and virtues. The
    fact that some of these values happen to be religious values does not
    mean that they cannot be taught in our schools.
        All these forms of religious expression and worship are permitted
    and protected by the first amendment. That doesn't change the fact that
    some students haven't been allowed to express their beliefs in these
    ways. What we have to do is to work together to help all Americans
    understand exactly what the first amendment does. It protects freedom of
    religion by allowing students to pray, and it protects freedom of
    religion by preventing schools from telling them how and when and what
    to pray. The first amendment keeps us all on common ground. We are
    allowed to believe and worship as we choose without the Government
    telling any of us what we can and cannot do.
        It is in that spirit that I am today directing the Secretary of
    Education and the Attorney General to provide every school district in
    America before school starts this fall with a detailed explanation of
    the religious expression permitted in schools, including all the things
    that I've talked about today. I hope parents, students, educators, and
    religious leaders can use this directive as a starting point. I hope it
    helps them to understand their differences, to protect student's
    religious rights, and to find common ground. I believe we can find that
    common ground.
        This past April, a broad coalition of religious and legal groups--
    Christian and Jewish, conservative and liberal, Supreme Court advocates
    and Supreme Court critics--put themselves on the solution side of this
    debate. They produced a remarkable document called ``Religion in Public
    Schools: A Joint Statement of Current Law.'' They put aside their deep
    differences and said, we all agree on what kind of religious expression
    the law permits in our schools. My directive borrows heavily and
    gratefully from their wise and thoughtful statement. This is a subject
    that could have easily divided the men and women that came together to
    discuss it. But they moved beyond their differences, and that may be as
    important as the specific document they produced.
        I also want to mention over 200 religious and civic leaders who
    signed the Williamsburg charter in Virginia in 1988. That charter
    reaffirms the core principles of the first amendment. We can live
    together with our deepest differences and all be stronger for it.
        The charter signers are impressive in their own right and all the
    more impressive for their differences of opinion, including Presidents
    Ford

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    and Carter; Chief Justice Rehnquist and the late Chief Justice Burger;
    Senator Dole and former Governor Dukakis; Bill Bennett and Lane
    Kirkland, the president of the AFL-CIO; Norman Lear and Phyllis Schlafly
    signed it together--(laughter)--Coretta Scott King and Reverend James
    Dobson.
        These people were able to stand up publicly because religion is a
    personal and private thing for Americans which has to have some public
    expression. That's how it is for me. I'm pretty old-fashioned about
    these things. I really do believe in the constancy of sin and the
    constant possibility of forgiveness, the reality of redemption and the
    promise of a future life. But I'm also a Baptist who believes that
    salvation is primarily personal and private, that my relationship is
    directly with God and not through any intermediary. Other people can
    have different views. And I've spent a good part of my life trying to
    understand different religious views, celebrate them, and figure out
    what brings us together.
        I will say again, the first amendment is a gift to us. And the
    Founding Fathers wrote the Constitution in broad ways so that it could
    grow and change but hold fast to certain principles. They knew--they
    knew that all people were fallible and would make mistakes from time to
    time. And as I said, there are times when the Supreme Court makes a
    decision, if I disagree with it, one of us is wrong. There's another
    possibility: Both of us could be wrong. [Laughter] That's the way it is
    in human affairs.
        But what I want to say to the American people and what I want to say
    to you is that James Madison and Thomas Jefferson did not intend to
    drive a stake in the heart of religion and to drive it out of our public
    life. What they intended to do was to set up a system so that we could
    bring religion into our public life and into our private life without
    any of us telling the other what to do.
        This is a big deal today. One county in America, Los Angeles County,
    has over 150 different racial and ethnic groups in it, over 150
    different. How many religious views do you suppose are in those groups?
    How many? Every significant religion in the world is represented in
    significant numbers in one American county and many smaller religious
    groups in one American county.
        We have got to get this right. We have got to get this right. And we
    have to keep thisbalance. This country needs to be a place where
    religion grows and flourishes.
        Don't you believe that if every kid in every difficult neighborhood
    in America were in a religious institution on the weekends, the
    synagogue on Saturday, a church on Sunday, a mosque on Friday, don't you
    really believe that the drug rate, the crime rate, the violence rate,
    the sense of self-destruction would go way down and the quality of the
    character of this country would go way up?
        But don't you also believe that if for the last 200 years we had had
    a State governed religion, people would be bored with it, think that it
    would--[laughter]--they would think it had been compromised by
    politicians, shaved around the edges, imposed on people who didn't
    really cotton to it, and we wouldn't have 250,000 houses of worship in
    America? I mean, we wouldn't.
        It may be imperfect, the first amendment, but it is the nearest
    thing ever created in any human society for the promotion of religion
    and religious values because it left us free to do it. And I strongly
    believe that the Government has made a lot of mistakes, which we have
    tried to roll back, in interfering with that around the edges. That's
    what the Religious Freedom Restoration Act is all about. That's what
    this directive that Secretary Riley and the Justice Department and I
    have worked so hard on is all about. That's what our efforts to bring in
    people of different religious views are all about. And I strongly
    believe that we have erred when we have rolled it back too much. And I
    hope that we can have a partnership with our churches in many ways to
    reach out to the young people who need the values, the hope, the belief,
    the convictions that comes with faith, and the sense of security in a
    very uncertain and rapidly changing world.
        But keep in mind we have a chance to do it because of the heritage
    of America and the protection of the first amendment. We have to get it
    right.
        Thank you very much.

    Note: The President spoke at 10:58 a.m. In his remarks, he referred to
    Fairfax County School System Superintendent Robert Spillane; Principal
    Robert Clark; Assistant Principal Linda Lubetkin; Student Council
    President Danny Murphy; Mayor Charles A. Robinson, Jr., of Vienna, VA;
    Fairfax County Board of Supervisors Chairman Katherine

    [[Page 1083]]

    Hanley; television producer Norman Lear; conservative spokespersons
    William J. Bennett, Phyllis Schlafly, and James Dobson; and author
    Stephen Carter.