Religious freedom requires eternal vigilance

Religious freedom, Congress unanimously declared in 1998, “undergirds the very origin and existence of the United States.” Presidents of both parties have called it a “fundamental human right,” a “critical foundation of our Nation’s liberty,” and “essential to our well-being.” And yet today, on Religious Freedom Day, this inalienable right is on shaky ground.

The story of religious freedom in America began long before the nation was born. A group of dissenters from the Church of England founded the Plymouth Colony in 1620, followed a decade later by John Winthrop and a group of Puritans who escaped King Charles I’s persecution and settled the Massachusetts Bay Colony. The Maryland Colony enacted the Act Concerning Religion in 1649, providing that no person would be “troubled … in