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BBS: The Witch's Brew
Date: 11-22-93 (21:18) Number: 73
From: ALBERTUS MAGNUS Refer#: NONE
To: ALL Recvd: NO
Subj: Religious Freedom Restora Conf: (103) Am.Theol.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
* Originally By: In*Touch
* Originally To: all
* Originally Re: Religious Freedom Restoration Act Remarks 1993-11-16
* Original Area: FIDO-AEN_News Service
THE WHITE HOUSE
Office of the Press Secretary
___________________________________________________________________
For Immediate Release November 16, 1993
REMARKS BY THE PRESIDENT
AT SIGNING CEREMONY FOR THE RELIGIOUS FREEDOM RESTORATION ACT
The South Grounds
9:15 A.M. EST
THE PRESIDENT: Thank you very much, Mr. Vice President, for those fine
remarks, and to the members of Congress, the chaplains of the House and the
Senate, and to all of you who worked so hard to help this day become a
reality. Let me especially thank the Coalition for the Free Exercise of
Religion for the central role they played in drafting this legislation and
working so hard for its passage.
It is interesting to note, as the Vice President said, what a broad
coalition of Americans came together to make this bill a reality. It's
interesting to note that that coalition produced a 97- to-3 vote in the United
States Senate, and a bill that had such broad support it was adopted on a
voice vote in the House.
I'm told that, as many of the people in the coalition worked together
across ideological and religious lines, some new friendships were formed and
some new trust was established, which shows, I suppose, that the power of God
is such that even in the legislative process miracles can happen. (Laughter.)
We all have a shared desire here to protect perhaps the most precious of
all American liberties, religious freedom. Usually the signing of legislation
by a president is a ministerial act, often a quiet ending to a turbulent
legislative process. Today, this event assumes a more majestic quality
because of our ability together to affirm the historic role that people of
faith have played in the history of this country and the constitutional
protections those who profess and express their faith have always demanded and
cherished.
The power to reverse legislation by legislation, a decision of the United
States Supreme Court, is a power that is rightly hesitantly and infrequently
exercised by the United States Congress. But this is an issue in which that
extraordinary measure was clearly called for.
As the Vice President said, this act reverses the Supreme Court's
decision, Employment Division against Smith, and reestablishes a standards
that better protects all Americans of all faiths in the exercise of their
religion in a way that I am convinced is far more consistent with the intent
of the founders of this nation than the Supreme Court decision.
More than 50 cases have been decided against individuals making religious
claims against government action since that decision was handed down. This
act will help to reverse that trend -- by honoring the principle that our laws
and institutions should not impede or hinder, but rather should protect and
preserve fundamental religious liberties.
The free exercise of religion has been called the first freedom -- that
which originally sparked the development of the full range of the Bill of
Rights. Our founders cared a lot about religion. And one of the reasons they
worked so hard to get the First Amendment into the Bill of Rights at the head
of the class is that they well understood what could happen to this country,
how both religion and government could be perverted if there were not some
space created and some protection provided. They knew that religion helps to
give our people the character without which a democracy cannot survive. They
knew that there needed to be a space of freedom between government and people
of faith that otherwise government might usurp.
They have seen now, all of us, that religion and religious institutions
have brought forth faith and discipline, community and responsibility over two
centuries for ourselves and enabled us to live together in ways that I believe
would not have been possible. We are, after all, the oldest democracy now in
history, and probably the most truly multiethnic society on the face of the
Earth. And I am convinced that neither one of those things would be true
today had it not been for the importance of the First Amendment and the fact
that we have kept faith with it for 200 years. (Applause.)
What this law basically says is that the government should be held to a
very high level of proof before it interferes with someone's free exercise of
religion. This judgment is shared by the people of the United States as well
as by the Congress. We believe strongly that we can never -- we can never be
too vigilant in this work.
Let me make one other comment if I might before I close and sit down and
sign this bill. There is a great debate now abroad in the land which finds
itself injected into several political races about the extent to which people
of faith can seek to do God's will as political actors. I would like to come
down on the side of encouraging everybody to act on what they believe is the
right thing to do. There are many people in this country who strenuously
disagree with me on what they believe are the strongest grounds of their
faiths. I encourage them to speak out. I encourage all Americans to reach
deep inside to try to determine what it is that drives their lives most
deeply.
As many of you know, I have been quite moved by Steven Carter's book, The
Culture of Disbelief. He makes a compelling case that today Americans of all
political persuasions and all regions have created a climate in this country
in which some people believe that they are embarrassed to say that they
advocate a course of action simply because they believe it is the right thing;
because they believe it is dictated by their faith, by what they discern to
be, with their best efforts, the will of God.
I submit to you today, my fellow Americans, that we can stand that kind
of debate in this country. We are living in a country where the most central
institution of our society, the family, has been under assault for 30 years.
We are living in a country in which 160,000 school children don't go to school
every day because they're afraid someone will shoot them, or beat them up, or
knife them. We are living in a country now where gun shots are the single
leading cause of death among teenage boys. We are living in a country where
people can find themselves shot in the cross fire of teenagers who are often
better armed than the police who are trying to protect other people from
illegal conduct.
It is high time we had an open and honest reaffirmation of the role of
American citizens of faith -- not so that we can agree, but so that we can
argue and discourse and seek the truth and seek to heal this troubled land.
So today I ask you to also think of that. We are a people of faith. We
have been so secure in that faith that we have enshrined in our Constitution
protection for people who profess no faith. And good for us for doing so.
That is what the First Amendment is all about. But let us never believe that
the freedom of religion imposes on any of us some responsibility to run from
our convictions. Let us instead respect one another's faiths, fight to the
death to preserve the right of every American to practice whatever convictions
he or she has, but bring our values back to the table of American discourse to
heal our troubled land.
Thank you very much. (Applause.)
(The bill is signed.) (Applause.)
END9:25 A.M. EST