Commemorating Religious Freedom Day
As David Barton and others have shown us, the Religious right views the narrative of our history as an important battle front in the culture wars -- particularly in defining what we mean by religious freedom. And yet our political culture tends to be overly consumed with highly transitory and subjective interpretations of microslices of demographic pie charts and polling data. As important as these things can be, they are not the only things worth considering -- and thinking and writing about well. Let's look to where our nation came from with respect to the meaning of religious freedom, equality, and separation of church and state. This will have everything to do with figuring out who we are and where we are going together. January 16th has by presidential tradition since the Clinton administration been declared to commemorate the Virginia Statute of Religious Freedom -- a pioneering piece of legislation drafted by Thomas Jefferson in1777; introduced in 1779, finally passed in 1785 when James Madison was governor and Jefferson was serving as ambassador to France. The Statute was enacted on January 16th, 1786. The following year, Madison traveled to Philadelphia where he served as the principal author of the federal Constitution. And in 1789, he was the principal author of the First Amendment. Jefferson viewed the Statute as one of things for which he most wanted to be remembered -- along with authoring the Declaration of Independence and founding the University of Virginia. Therefore, in commemoration of Religious Freedom Day and all that the ideas it contains means to us, we will be honored by guest front page posts over the next few days, from a number of prominent leaders, including Mr. Jefferson.
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