January 16th has since 1996, been celebrated as Religious Freedom Day.  Presidents since then have issued proclamations acknowledging the day.  This year, as he has done before, President Obama takes the notable stand that will upset some on the Religious Right, stating "atheists and agnostics" enjoy the same rights as people of any and all faiths.  

We are pleased to present this year's presidential proclamation, by guest front pager, Barack Obama. -- FC

RELIGIOUS FREEDOM DAY, 2014

BY THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF
AMERICA

A PROCLAMATION

In 1786, the Virginia General Assembly affirmed an ideal that has long been central to the American journey. The Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom, penned by Thomas Jefferson, declared religious liberty a natural right and any attempt to subvert it "a departure from the plan of the Holy Author of our religion, who being Lord both of body and mind, yet chose not to propagate it by coercions on either."

The Statute inspired religious liberty protections in the First Amendment, which has stood for almost two and a quarter centuries.

Today, America embraces people of all faiths and of no faith. We are Christians and Jews, Muslims and Hindus, Buddhists and Sikhs, atheists and agnostics. Our religious diversity enriches our cultural fabric and reminds us that what binds us as one is not the tenets of our faiths, the colors of our skin, or the origins of our names. What makes us American is our adherence to shared ideals -- freedom, equality, justice, and our right as a people to set our own course.

America proudly stands with people of every nation who seek to think, believe, and practice their faiths as they choose. In the years to come, my Administration will remain committed to promoting religious freedom, both at home and across the globe.

We urge every country to recognize religious freedom as both a universal right and a key to a stable, prosperous, and peaceful future.

As we observe this day, let us celebrate America' s legacy of religious liberty, embrace diversity in our own communities, and resolve once more to advance religious freedom in our time.

NOW, THEREFORE, I, BARACK OBAMA, 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, 2014, as Religious Freedom Day. I call on all Americans to commemorate this day with events and activities that teach us about this critical foundation of our Nation's liberty, and show us how we can protect it for future generations at home and around the world.

IN WITNESS WHEREOF, I have here unto set my hand this fifteenth day of January, in the year of our Lord two thousand fourteen, and of the Independence of the United States of America the two hundred and thirty - eighth.

BARACK OBAMA

One of our less well known national days is Religious Freedom Day, which commemorates the enactment of Virginia's Statute for Religious Freedom. The Virginia Statute was written by Thomas Jefferson in 1777 but it wasn't passed and signed into law until 1786, following a campaign by then-Delegate James Madison. Its unfortunate that Religious Freedom Day is not better known -- because the statute was the forerunner to the approach to religious freedom and separation of church and state taken by the framers of the Constitution and later the First Amendment.  

There will certainly be a Presidential Proclamation on January 16th. But if past is prologue, there will probably not be a whole lot else. But it is time for that to change.  In this era when religious freedom is rising as a defining national issue, the day provides us a teachable moment -- teachable most importantly to ourselves. Religious freedom is, or ought to be a strong issue for progressives, one with roots in the best traditions of the Enlightenment, progressive religious communities, and of the American Revolution and the making of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights.

Meanwhile, the Religious Right is making religious freedom a central part of their argument on everything from abortion rights, to marriage equality to the contraception benefit of the Affordable Care Act. But there is much in the history of religious freedom in the U.S. that makes claims of the need for most such exemptions from the law, ring hollow. On another front, some on the Religious Right go so far as to argue that religious freedom is for Christians only and certainly not for Muslims. But history proves otherwise.

Lebanese Library Torched After Blasphemy Accusation, reads an article in the charismatic Christian magazine Charisma. The article concerns the tragic arson of one of Lebannon's top libraries and suggests the crime might have been carried out by Islamic radicals.

There's nothing wrong with calling out book burners. It's laudable - except, perhaps, if those doing so have also served as leaders in a global movement which itself advocates book burning and have published a book by a pastor who in 2010 organized an internationally controversial event that featured the public incineration of holy scripture from a major world religion; one might expect, at the very least, public disclosure of such apparent conflicts of interest.

The Christian Post is now reporting the controversy. Update [2014-1-7 16:18:27 by Frederick Clarkson]:

It ought to be self evident that basic honesty is essential to good journalism and meaningful public discourse. But of course, there are political, religious, and commercial demagogues for whom good journalism and meaningful public discourse are not the point, and may even get in the way of their objectives.  But when people realize they are being had and publicly object, change becomes possible.

That's why I am pleased to report that conservative evangelical writer Alan Noble recently posted a very strong piece, calling out Fox News host Todd Starnes for authoring "lies" about an alleged government war on Christmas.

We made it through the 50th anniversary of the JFK murder and were forced to endure another round of historical revisionism not to mention real nut cases coming forth with the latest information. To the majority of the nation's citizens Oliver Stone has the final word on the event just as the majority of the Tea Party crowd believes David Barton has the final word on the founding father's concept of a First Amendment.  We might find a great deal of Barton's appeal in the likes of Stone.

These are challenging times for the Religious Right. The movement seems to be rapidly losing ground on one of its signature issues, same-sex marriage, and polls show large numbers of young people recoiling from the theocratic agenda of ultra-conservative fundamentalists.

So these groups must be ready to pack up their tents and go home, right?

While Pope Francis is getting most of the media attention related to all things Catholic, a Catholic lay organization that has been around for more than 130 years is starting to be the object of some well-deserved scrutiny.

The Knights of Columbus, the largest Catholic lay organization in the world, is well known for its charitable work. There's a good chance that somewhere in America on just about any weekend, the Knights of Columbus is holding an event to raise money to help the poor, feed the hungry, provide disaster relief, and support families in need. Its bake sales and pancake suppers are events that many communities eagerly look forward to and support wholeheartedly.

Unbeknownst to many cookie or pancake enthusiasts, however, is the reality that a portion of the money - read that, millions of dollars -- raised by the Knights is being poured into anti-abortion and anti-same-sex marriage campaigns.

It's that time of the year again, folks. It's time for the presentation of the annual Coughlin Award. As it is every year, the competition was stiff, so much so that this year for the first time it is a group award. This year award goes to Kansas City-St. Joseph, Missouri Bishop Robert Finn and his legion of supporters.

The chapel at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary is in the process of becoming a spectacle of nepotism, cronyism and ostentatious self-importance. This is the 12 year project of the wife of one of the leaders of the conservative take-over of the Southern Baptist Convention. It is her "dream" to memorialize dozens of SBC conservative faction leaders in stained glass in the chapel Southwest Baptist Theological Seminary.  Dorothy Patterson, wife of current seminary President and erstwhile conservative insurgent, Paige Patterson, was recently featured in a front page story about her project in the Ft. Worth Star-Telegram.  

Next year, the Pattersons will be among the first to be immortalized in a stained glass window together.

Baptist writer Alan Bean thinks all this is premature, at best. Bean writes:

My initial reaction to all this eulogizing of faith heroes, most of whom are still with us, was distinctly negative. It seemed tacky and a bit presumptuous. Shouldn't we wait for the verdict of history? Don't we normally reserve stained-glass windows for genuine heroes of the faith who are acknowledged inside and outside the limited circle of our faith tradition?

I recently taped an interview with Freedom's Ring Radio, a nationally syndicated weekly broadcast produced by the Church State Council in cooperation with the North American Religious Liberty Association, which is a ministry of the Pacific Union Council of the Seventh Day Adventists.

My conversation with host Alan J. Reinach began with the historic and growing alliance of the Catholic Bishops and the Protestant evangelicals of the Christian Right. We went from there into a discussion of how the struggle over the rights of conscience of people both for and against marriage equality, among other things, are increasingly defined in terms of religious liberty.  The interview is scheduled to air nationwide on December 29th.  The podcast is available here.

Catholic University of America (CUA) in Washington, DC recently set off a firestorm when it announced it has accepted a $1 million grant from the Charles Koch Foundation. The Washington Post reported, "The grant to Catholic will enable the university's new School of Business and Economics to recruit and hire four visiting scholars to conduct research on `principled entrepreneurship.'"

But CUA has also been the unofficial home base for Catholic advocacy of Distributive Justice in the United States  since the early 20th century.  Distributive Justice's greatest clerical proponent, Msgr. John A. Ryan, was a towering fixture at the University at the time.  All this has left advocates of Distributive Justice concerned that the Koch cash is really a Trojan Horse for Catholic Right libertarianism.

A sympathetic reading of the recent remark by Pope Francis would be that he was trying to say the right thing about the nature of Christianity when he stumbled. A less sympathetic reading would suggest that Francis and the Church generally has a very long way to go in showing respect for non-Catholics.

Whatever one thinks of Pope Francis, the cult of celebrity is obscuring at least as much as it is revealing about the state of the church and even the direction of this papacy. This is something to which everyone who values religious pluralism and separation of church and state needs to keep both an open ear and an open mind.

The occasion for this post is how astounded I was when I read how Francis, in an apparent effort to denounce religious supremacism, engaged in religious bigotry and supremacism himself.