The Freedom From Religion Foundation is condemning President Trump’s recent Religious Freedom Day proclamation as a sweeping distortion of American history and a direct attack on the constitutional separation between religion and government.

Trump’s proclamation repeatedly invokes “God-given rights,” declares the United States a “Nation under God,” and pledges to “restore America as a Nation of prayer,” language that flatly contradicts the secular principles on which the country was founded.

Religious Freedom Day commemorates the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom, passed on Jan. 16, 1786, which rejected government-sponsored religion and affirmed freedom of conscience for believers and nonbelievers alike. Trump’s proclamation has turned that historic achievement on its head by promoting government favoritism toward religion, particularly Christianity.

The statute, authored by Thomas Jefferson, was revolutionary precisely because it severed religion from state power. It guaranteed that citizens would not be compelled to support religion, attend worship, or suffer civil consequences for their beliefs or lack thereof. That principle later became the cornerstone of the First Amendment’s Establishment Clause, and its wording was borrowed by a majority of states in adopting their state constitutional bill of rights.

Trump’s proclamation presents a mythologized version of American history that elevates religious faith as the defining force of the nation while ignoring the Founders’ explicit rejection of religious authority in government. Jefferson himself warned that government involvement in religion produces “hypocrisy and meanness” and insisted that religious belief must remain entirely voluntary. Jefferson’s wording repudiated the idea of “fallible and uninspired men” assuming “domination over the faith of others, setting up their own opinions and modes of thinking as only true and infallible, and … endeavouring to impose them on others.” This, he maintained, has “established and maintained false religions over the greatest part of the world.”

Comments FFRF Co-President Dan Barker, “Yet this is precisely what the Trump administration is seeking to do — imposing a branch of Christianity upon other Americans.”

Jefferson also wrote that for the state “to compel a man to furnish contributions of money for the propagation of opinions which he disbelievers, is sinful and tyrannical.”

Of particular concern is Trump’s celebration of policies aimed at injecting religion into public schools and government institutions, including his directive to “protect” prayer in public schools and his creation of a federal task force focused exclusively on alleged “anti-Christian bias.”

“Public schools are not churches, and the government has no business encouraging prayer or faith as a civic duty,” Gaylor adds. “That is not religious freedom. That is government-sponsored religion.”

Trump’s call for families to gather at places of worship to commemorate Religious Freedom Day further underscores the exclusionary nature of the proclamation. Nearly one in three Americans today is nonreligious, and millions practice minority faiths. Religious Freedom Day belongs to all Americans, including atheists, agnostics and religious minorities, not just those who worship a particular god.

True religious freedom means the right to believe, not believe, change beliefs, or keep beliefs private, all without government pressure. The moment the government starts urging prayer, praising faith as a national duty, or privileging one religion over others, it betrays that freedom.

FFRF urges Americans to remember the real meaning of Religious Freedom Day by recommitting to the constitutional wall separating church and state, the very safeguard that protects religious liberty for everyone.

The Freedom From Religion Foundation is a U.S.-based nonprofit dedicated to defending the constitutional principle of separation between state and church and educating the public on matters relating to nontheism. With about 42,000 members, FFRF is the largest association of freethinkers (atheists, agnostics and humanists) in North America. For more information, visit ffrf.org.

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