Presidential Documents

195 

Federal Register 

Vol. 84, No. 14 

Tuesday, January 22, 2019 

Title 3— 

The President 

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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196 Federal Register / Vol. 84, No. 14 / Tuesday, January 22, 2019 / Presidential Documents 

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 fortythird. 

[FR Doc. 2019–00092 

Filed 1–18–19; 8:45 am] 

Billing code 3295–F9–P 


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