Richmond Times-Dispatch, Religious Freedom Day 2026
Today is Religious Freedom Day – when we celebrate the 1786 adoption of Virginia’s Statute of Religious Freedom, a foundation for the First Amendment and the proper relationship between church and government.
Sadly, recent events suggest that Trump administration officials are ignoring the Statute’s wisdom and using government positions to promote their own religious beliefs. On Christmas, for example, the Secretary of State’s official social media posted “The joyous message of Christmas is the hope of Eternal Life through Christ.” The Defense Secretary’s official Facebook page celebrated “the birth of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.” DHS, not to be outdone, declared that “We are blessed to share a nation and a Savior.”
As a preliminary matter, about 120 million Americans do not share Jesus Christ as a savior.
More to the point: Donald Trump and his appointees are free to worship publicly and proclaim Jesus their savior. But the President, Secretary of State, Secretary of Defense, and Director of Homeland Security are not.
Thomas Jefferson and James Madison might explain the paradox.
The Constitution bans any “Religious test” for public office. But the Founders understood that as a practical matter officials were likely to be religious and undoubtedly would pray and worship publicly. Jefferson, for example, in his second inaugural address, sought “the favour of that being in whose hands we are” and invited attendees to “join in supplications with me.”
Yet the Founders were also clear that an official’s personal religion was not in any way an official religion. Jefferson was emphatic that the president could not issue a prayer proclamation during a national crisis, explaining that “prayers are religious exercises” and officially to call Americans to pray violated the Constitution.
Madison, too, wrote that officials in “their individual capacities” could worship the same as anyone, but it must be clear that religious practices were not official acts and government resources could not be used to promote religion.
The Founders understood that an official can pray, even publicly, but cannot pray officially.
So what’s the harm in Christmas prayers from Trump officials?
One of the First Amendment’s primary functions is to prevent religious discord among Americans. Our Founders, living in a world wracked by religious wars, understood how dangerous it was to link religious disputes with political power. Jefferson bemoaned the “oceans of human blood” spilled in such terrible conflicts. With that bloody history in mind, the Founders sought to prevent government from ever taking sides on religion. As Jefferson declared, American freedoms were for the “Jew and the gentile, the Christian and the Mahometan, the Hindoo and the infidel of every denomination.” To keep the peace, government had to stay out of religious disagreements.
Mixing church and state, including official prayer, creates an alliance between church/state where one supports the other at the expense of the people, what Jefferson called religion’s “alliance with the Despot.” Use of religion for political purposes, Madison declared, was “an unhallowed perversion of the means of salvation.”
Evangelicals believed that any government “direction or Influence” corrupted personal devotion and was unwelcome by God. In 1785, the Virginia presbytery concluded government involvement in religion, even encouraging religion, is “destructive of genuine morality.” Madison wrote “religion flourishes in greater purity, without than with the aid of Government.”
When Virginia emphatically rejected government support for religion, Baptist minister Lewis Lunsford celebrated: “the unlawful cohabitation between Church and State, which has so often been looked upon as holy wedlock, must now suffer a separation and be put forever asunder.”
That brings us back to officials using government resources to promote their religious beliefs. Trump officials are failing the basic test of separation of church and state and compromising America’s religious freedom. After all, no one truly has freedom to believe without an equal freedom – uninfluenced by government – not to believe. While it may seem that Christmas expressions on social media do little harm, Madison warned against such “impulses of interest and passion.”
Today, as we celebrate Jefferson’s Statute for Religious Freedom, we can rededicate ourselves to real religious freedom. The Founders knew that those desiring a theocracy and monarchy would return someday, trying to take back what Americans won in the Revolution. The protections of the Constitution, including separation of church and state, were the bulwarks created to discourage such ambitious and unscrupulous demagogues. We must continue to defend them.
President Trump might begin by circulating to his minions a copy of the Virginia Statute that we celebrate today.
