{"id":2160,"date":"2023-12-15T14:00:00","date_gmt":"2023-12-15T15:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/shinsori.me\/?p=2160"},"modified":"2023-12-15T23:30:36","modified_gmt":"2023-12-15T23:30:36","slug":"what-is-the-significance-of-bill-of-rights-day-opinion-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/shinsori.me\/index.php\/2023\/12\/15\/what-is-the-significance-of-bill-of-rights-day-opinion-2\/","title":{"rendered":"What is the significance of Bill of Rights Day? | Opinion"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Michelle Budge, Deseret News<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/figure>\n

Today is Bill of Rights Day.<\/a> We celebrate the rights and protections constitutionally adopted during George Washington\u2019s first administration as president, on Dec. 15, 1791. Among these is the freedom of religion. It is not a stretch to believe that Washington would be dismayed by the recent rise in antisemitism in the United States<\/a>. We know this because of his own words and actions. <\/p>\n

As the new president of the United States, Washington visited Rhode Island in August 1790 to celebrate its adoption of the U.S. Constitution and to encourage the state\u2019s ratification of the federal bill of rights, which the First Federal Congress had passed on Sept. 25, 1789.<\/p>\n

While Washington was in Newport, Moses Seixas, the warden of the second-oldest synagogue in the United States, wrote a letter offering congratulations<\/a> to the newly elected president. Washington used his response<\/a> to explain the meaning of religious freedom in the new United States. \u201cAll Americans possess alike the liberty of conscience and immunities of citizenship\u201d \u2014 all Americans, including the members of Seixas\u2019 Jewish congregation. <\/p>\n

Washington\u2019s letter shows a transformation in the relationship between the government and Americans\u2019 religious expression. When the Revolution began, George Mason, one of the most distinguished lawyers of that period, drafted a declaration of rights for the state of Virginia. Regarding religion, he proposed the text that \u201call men should enjoy the fullest toleration in the exercise of religion.\u201d Mason was articulating the law as it stood in 1776. It drew from the English Act of Toleration of 1689, which allowed dissenters to worship outside of the state church. Essentially, after nearly a century of religious upheaval and state persecution of nonconformists, the English decided to give permission for worship outside the \u201ctrue,\u201d tax-supported state church. This tolerance increased political stability.  <\/p>\n

But the American Revolution went further, changing toleration \u2014 where the government gives permission to be religiously different \u2014 to a recognition that religious expression is an inherent right of conscience. Thus, James Madison proposed a change to Mason\u2019s draft, that \u201call men should enjoy the free exercise of religion.\u201d This is the wording the Virginia legislature adopted, and the phrasing that influenced the First Amendment\u2019s free-exercise clause: \u201cCongress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof \u2026\u201d  <\/p>\n

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