Meditation 1367
"Religious Freedom Day"
by: Jason Frye
Reprinted from the Secular Policy Weekly newsletter of 23 January. 2020
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On 16 January the office of US President Donald Trump issued a proclamation like his predecessors have done every year since 1993. "Religious Freedom Day" is promoted in honor of Thomas Jefferson's "Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom." This, at a time when the policies and rhetoric of his administration are on a course starkly antithetical to a Jeffersonian spirit relating to the "Wall of Separation." Our cherished assertive secularism was hard won, is the level playing field that instills a legal and social architecture for fairness in governance and political agency, and has an active, oppositional cadre of organizations and individuals looking to blur said borders.
Rob Boston of Americans United for the Separation of Church and State wrote of his experiences witnessing the oral arguments in a case being heard right now before the US Supreme Court on constitutionality of restricting public funds in voucher programs applicable to religious schools (Espinoza v. Montana Department of Revenue). The Court may land on the side of greater flexibility in granting private religious organizations unacceptable access to public funds.
The fight continues.
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