    [United States Statutes at Large, Volume 133, 116th Congress, 1st Session]
    [From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]

    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.

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    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.
    DONALD J. TRUMP