Religious Liberty for All: Celebrating This Founding Freedom at America 250

As the United States celebrates its 250th anniversary, Americans still believe that religious liberty is a cornerstone of our democracy. Against that backdrop, the Trump administration’s creation of a Religious Liberty Commission in May 2025 has raised serious concerns. The administration’s commission reflects a narrow ideological perspective that does not represent the extraordinary diversity of religions and beliefs in this country. At a moment when the nation should be renewing its commitment to the constitutional promise of liberty and equality for all, the commission risks advancing a vision of religious freedom that favors some voices while leaving out many others.

Religious liberty belongs to all people, not to any single tradition, political party, or administration. This conviction led our four organizations to act. We invited submissions from leading scholars, historians, elected leaders, legal experts, faith leaders, and theologians from across the country. Their diverse experiences illustrate how religious freedom operates in American life. While their perspectives differ, they share a commitment to pluralism, dignity, and the constitutional framework that enables diverse communities to flourish and come together as equals to build American democracy.

This report unites diverse voices in an expression of interfaith solidarity and democratic responsibility. It presents a clear and compelling alternative to the Trump administration’s Religious Liberty Commission. The individuals quoted here envision religious freedom rooted in the First Amendment, built on the separation of church and state, and grounded in historical truth and the realities of a multireligious nation. As America reaches its semiquincentennial, these perspectives affirm that America’s strength lies in protecting the freedom of belief and nonbelief and ensuring that religious liberty is not misused to decide who belongs, whose rights are protected, and who has power.

We hope the people who contributed to this report inspire you. Each of us has a story about why religious freedom is important and matters. It has shaped our families, our communities, and our houses of worship. It helps us build a more just and equal society. It is vital to our democracy. By sharing our stories, we can work together to preserve and protect religious liberty for all.

 Neera Tanden, Rachel Laser, Rev. Paul Brandeis Raushenbush, and Fish Stark

The following contributors offered their perspectives for this project:

• Rep. Yassamin Ansari (D-AZ)
• Assemblyman Ravi S. Bhalla, New Jersey General Assembly, District 32
• Sister Simone Campbell, former executive director, NETWORK Lobby for Catholic Social Justice
• Sen. Chris Coons (D-DE)
• Holly Hollman, chief legal officer, BJC (Baptist Joint Committee for Religious Liberty)
• Rep. Jared Huffman (D-CA)
• Rev. Dr. Jacqui Lewis, senior minister, Middle Church
• Rev. Carlos L. Malavé, founder and president, Latino Christian National Network
• Rev. Terri Hord Owens, general minister and president, Christian Church (Disciples of Christ)
• Skye Perryman, president and CEO, Democracy Forward
• Elizabeth Reiner Platt, director of the Law, Rights, and Religion Project, Union Theological Seminary
• Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD)
• Rabbi David Saperstein, senior advisor for policy and strategy, Union for Reform Judaism; former U.S. ambassador-at-large for international religious freedom
• Anisha Singh, co-deputy director of advocacy, Legal Aid Justice Center
• Rev. Adam Russell Taylor, president of Sojourners
• Jennifer Walker Thomas, co-executive director, Mormon Women for Ethical Government
• Sunita Viswanath, executive director, Hindus for Human Rights
• Rev. Dr. Corey D. B. Walker, dean of the School of Divinity; Wake Forest professor of the humanities and director of the program in African American studies at Wake Forest University
• Bishop Hope Morgan Ward, ecumenical officer, Council of Bishops of The United Methodist Church
• Dr. Homayra Ziad, dean of the Divinity Program and director of the Hassan Institute for Interfaith Encounter, American Islamic College

My parents fled the Islamic Republic of Iran, a theocratic regime that controls how people speak, act, and pray. They came to this country, the United States of America, seeking its promise of freedom, which began imperfectly 250 years ago this July.

While our nation has never fully lived up to its founding ideals, for the first time in our nation’s history, we are going backward instead of forward, with our rights and freedoms actively under attack by right-wing Christian nationalists. I work every day to ensure that we live up to our nation’s values: freedom, equality, and democracy. Everyone must not only be free but welcome to practice, or not practice, whatever faith they may choose.

I am proudly agnostic and do not partake in religious practice. This must be equally as valued in our society and government as someone who practices a particular religion or denomination. The separation of religion and state is vital not only to the rights of nonpracticing people but also for those of religious individuals; rather than have the government dictate religion and practice, it must be up to every person to choose what they find meaning in.

Right now, the freedom of religion and practice in this country is under direct assault from the Trump administration. We have outspoken Christian nationalists serving in the highest offices in our land, mandating religion in school, undermining non-Christian worship and practices of public servants, including service members, and openly espousing extreme Christian viewpoints from their positions of authority.

While this moment may feel particularly grim, we must double down on our efforts to revitalize the vision of our founders, who wove the separation of religion and state into the fabric of this nation. It is a shared institutional value that we must fight to protect and defend.

Religious liberty, properly understood, is one of America’s most enduring founding promises, a principle that affirms the government has no authority to dictate what people believe, how they worship, or whether they worship at all. It is a shield, not a sword. It protects every American equally, the Baptist and the Buddhist, the Muslim and the Methodist, the Sikh and the secular.

This conviction is shaped not only by public service but by years in the courtroom. Before entering elected office, my legal advocacy focused on defending Sikh Americans who were told that turbans and beards, articles of faith worn since the time of Guru Gobind Singh, made them unwelcome in workplaces, in schools, and in uniform. Too often, opportunities were denied not because of conduct but because of identity. In those moments, the law, when applied faithfully, stood as a safeguard for equal protection.

Those experiences make one truth clear: Religious liberty only works when it is universal. The moment it becomes a privilege reserved for the majority, it stops being a right and becomes a tool of exclusion. Invoking religious freedom to impose one set of beliefs on others is not liberty. Undermining the civil rights of minorities, LGBTQ+ Americans, or the nonreligious is not liberty. It is religious dominance, and it runs counter to the First Amendment.

As the nation approaches its 250th year, the choice is whether to uphold that promise or allow it to erode. The answer must be to uphold it—for Sikh students who should never have to choose between faith and education, for atheists entitled to equal dignity, and for every American whose freedom of conscience defines the country at its best.

Religious liberty for all must truly mean all, nothing less.

My Roman Catholic faith is at the center of my life. It nourishes me, provides insight, expands my awareness, and gives me courage in the face of conflict. Faith is not merely a part of my life; it is the foundation of the work I do.

A vivid example of this was during our “Nuns on the Bus” trips. Each day—whether traveling together or participating digitally during the pandemic—began with a half hour of morning prayer. In those moments, we opened ourselves to the Divine and expressed our willingness to embrace the day. This openness allowed us to approach even the most challenging situations, including conflict, with hearts grounded in our faith and its call to love one another without limit.

The life-giving power of faith is not limited to the Roman Catholic tradition. I see the same grounding at the heart of Judaism, Islam, Sikhism, Buddhism, and all branches of Christianity. This shared spiritual foundation is one of the cornerstones of our nation: the freedom for every individual to enter their faith and draw strength for the journey of life. Faith frees us from fear of others and gives us the courage to learn from the journeys of those whose experiences differ from our own. The United States’ commitment to religious freedom allows this rich diversity to flourish and is a treasure that must be protected.

In the Christian tradition, Jesus often calls us to “fear not.” This call is not simply a comfort—it is an invitation to embrace diversity, not as a barrier but as a meadow rich with learning, growth, and understanding. Faith drives out fear and allows us to honor the founding genius of our nation: We are stronger, wiser, and richer for the diversity of our beliefs.

Guided by this insight, I seek not to impose my own experience on others but to encourage everyone to follow their path, to find their grounding, and to open their hearts. In the freedom to live our faith—whatever it may be—we find courage, connection, and the strength to build a better world together.

Our nation’s foundation of religious liberty made possible the American melting pot. Without religious freedom, many of us would not be here today. Over the centuries, so many have come to America insisting on a separation of church and state because they came from places where that wasn’t the case. Those who didn’t worship the right way—or who didn’t worship at all—were beaten, arrested, and killed by a government that saw them as the enemy.

I’ve lived in and traveled to countries where those things still happen today—where democracy is yet to be born, where it is struggling, or where it has been crushed; where authoritarians demand their citizens worship the same God or hide their faith. Like many of you, I see traces in what’s happening today in Washington.

Faith, foundationally, rebels against repression. It is transgressive. It calls us to perform radical love, to help those outside our ordinary circle of concern—those who don’t look like us, worship like us, speak like us. That’s why religious freedom is a fundamental threat to authoritarianism. It insists that we are all children of God—that we are all equal. There’s a reason labor rights, environmental rights, civil rights all had their foundation in a vision of each other and our country that was rooted in a passionate, even radical, vision of faith.

Our democracy, and democracy more broadly understood, at its core is an exercise in upholding human dignity, in giving everyone the same rights. It relies on our most foundational freedoms: to speak, to assemble, to petition, to report, and to worship.

Religious freedom is the linchpin of change. If we let it slip away, our other freedoms, and our future, will follow.

Like other fundamental freedoms, our religious liberty hasn’t been secured by accident. Our history has required striving to live up to bold promises.

On the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, history is being distorted in the courts and the public square in ways that threaten to undermine our unique American experiment. While it is not surprising that deep religious differences have sometimes led to political conflicts, we have come too far to give up on ideals that have endured across centuries.

As a lawyer advocating from the historic Baptist perspective in courts and legislative coalitions, I’ve seen how our form of government allows both religion and democracy to thrive. But that only happens by virtue of a wider community’s abiding commitments and hard work.

We Baptists have a tradition of soul liberty—a radical concept that protects each person’s choice in spiritual decisions, respecting freedom of conscience. The long-standing Baptist commitment to separation of church and state, as embodied in U.S. law, has provided essential guardrails for religious freedom. We proudly claim the words of one of our forebears in faith—John Smyth, the first English Baptist—who warned, “The magistrate is not by virtue of his office to meddle with religion, or matters of conscience, to force or compel men to this or that form of religion or doctrine.” Such sentiments have inspired preachers and patriots outside of our particular religious community, including leaders in the founding generation.

Religious freedom is for everyone. That promise is our continuous calling today. It emerges from our country’s flawed yet hopeful “history and tradition” that the current U.S. Supreme Court keeps talking about. If we want religious freedom for ourselves, we must heed the lessons of history and seek to ensure it for others as well.

Religious liberty is a great American success story for one critical reason: Our Constitution requires government neutrality in matters of faith. For more than two centuries, that principle has allowed diverse religions to flourish, protected freedom of conscience, and prevented any group from imposing its beliefs through government power. A secular, neutral state is why America escaped the sectarian bloodshed that consumed Europe for centuries.

I’ve seen the benefits personally. My mother was a devout Protestant, my brothers are agnostic, my sister is an Orthodox Jew, my wife of 30 years is Catholic. After leaving the Christian faith of my youth, I eventually embraced Humanism. That kind of freedom and pluralism is possible in America because our government does not take sides in matters of religion.

It is exactly what the founders intended. Thomas Jefferson and James Madison understood that genuine religious liberty requires both freedom of religion and freedom from religion. Jefferson enshrined this in the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom, the first law in the newly independent colonies to declare that rights must never hinge on religious belief and government must never favor any faith. Madison later embedded the same principle in our Constitution through Article VI’s ban on religious tests and the First Amendment’s prohibition on governmental “establishment of religion.” Jefferson called it a “wall of separation.” And it was built on a uniquely American foundation laid a century earlier by Roger Williams, the Puritan dissident who founded the colony of Rhode Island as a haven for religious liberty—the first government in the Western world to guarantee church‑state separation in its charter.

That is our founding legacy—the real religious liberty we should celebrate on the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. Unfortunately, the Trump administration’s sham Religious Liberty Commission and its politicized America 250 campaign seeks to replace it with a fake Christian nationalist narrative that turns religious liberty from a shield that protects all of us into a sword that declares America a “Christian nation” and privileges one religious group over all others.

As we mark America’s 250-year milestone, we must push back against this distortion while lifting up the true story of religious liberty—our secular constitutional framework that has kept the peace, protected minorities, and allowed an extraordinary diversity of beliefs to thrive while ensuring a public square that Americans of all faith perspectives share on equal terms. Let’s celebrate and reaffirm our government’s neutrality on matters of religion—the all-American idea that makes religious liberty possible.

On one of my trips to South Africa, I visited the Cradle of Humankind, a paleoanthropological site located about 50 kilometers northwest of Johannesburg, in the Gauteng province. Declared a World Heritage Site by UNESCO in 1999, the site is home to the largest known concentration of human ancestral remains anywhere in the world. While we were becoming human, “Ubuntu” was guiding relationships.

Ubuntu comes from the Zulu phrase “Umuntu ngumuntu ngabantu,” which literally means “A person is a person through other people.” Another translation is “I am who I am because we are who we are.” We are not human by ourselves. Our survival and thriving are intertwined.

Ubuntu predates religion and undergirds the universal call to love neighbor as self. In so many traditions, we hear the call to Love the stranger. Do unto others what you would have them do unto you. Don’t withhold from your neighbor that which you need for yourself. Don’t do anything to break another’s heart.

As a clergy, Ubuntu has encouraged me to practice my faith with fierce, interrelated love and to honor the free expression of others’ faith praxis. All paths that lead to love are welcome in my community at Middle Church. Grounded in Ubuntu, we are a safer and braver space for Christians, Muslims, Jews, Buddhists, Zoroastrians, Hindus, agnostics and atheists, who all come seeking community and a path toward love. Period.

Before religion was weaponized against our siblings, we were becoming human, becoming neighbors. Interconnected in our shared humanity. Perhaps understanding Ubuntu and loving our neighbor as ourselves is the path to religious freedom.

As I write these words, national media report that President Donald Trump will participate in a public Bible reading from the Oval Office. This is not a neutral act of personal piety. It is a public declaration, one that advances the dangerous path this administration has chosen: the promotion of Christianity as the de facto religion of the United States. This mirrors the narrow perspectives of the Trump administration’s Religious Liberty Commission.

This path contradicts the very foundations upon which our nation was built. John Adams wrote plainly in the 1796 Treaty of Tripoli that “the government of the United States of America is not in any sense founded on the Christian religion.” President Ronald Reagan declared on October 26, 1984, before a Jewish congregation in Valley Stream, New York, “We establish no religion in this country, we command no worship, we mandate no belief, nor will we ever. Church and state are, and must remain, separate.” And in 2015, Pope Francis challenged the world to cherish “freedom of conscience, religious freedom, the freedom of each person, each family, each people” as the foundation of all other rights.

These are not partisan words; they are the words of a pope from Latin America and of the American tradition itself. This makes the composition of the Trump administration’s Religious Liberty Commission even more troubling. Its members do not represent the full diversity of American religious life; several have documented ties to Christian nationalist movements. Needless to say, there is not a single Latino voice among them.

This is not a commission for all Americans. It is retrograde to the inclusive, pluralistic nation that the majority of Americans—and especially our young people—are longing to become. When religious liberty is weaponized to privilege one faith above all others, it ceases to be liberty at all and becomes a threat to the very freedom it claims to protect.

The Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) in the United States and Canada represents the evolution of a movement that began in revival in Cane Ridge, Kentucky, in 1801. While congregational polity is a hallmark of our church tradition, it is our understanding of religious liberty that was a catalyst for our beginning. Early Disciples believed, as we still do, that there should not be a “test of fellowship” to receive the Lord’s Supper or to be part of a church community. By this they meant that there would be no doctrinal or credal requirement for those who wished to join a congregation. The confession of Jesus as the Son of the Living God and as Lord and Savior of the world is certainly held in common. But Disciples resisted any attempt to frame governance of the church based on whether any human being stood in direct judgement as to the validity or “orthodoxy” of another’s understanding of the gospel or the Bible. Unity, we believe, is a gift from God, and while we may disagree on many points of doctrine, the call to walk together even when we disagree and thereby bear witness to the limitless love of God is truly our calling. I would argue that this is at the heart of the vision for the United States.

Religious liberty in my tradition is therefore a prerequisite for community and the practice of faith. We cannot truly exercise our faith if a central entity or governmental authority is allowed to tell us what is faithful, what is orthodox; we cannot be ordered to believe or act according to a particular official’s religious beliefs or suffer the threat of dissolution or exclusion from a community or society because we disagree. We never take positions wherein we argue that to disagree is a mark of not being Christian. And we resist the notion that to disagree on elements of faith or doctrine renders one “un-American.” That is the project of Christian nationalism, which our church has spoken against firmly. Let us be the nation we say we are, and ensure ongoing freedom for the exercise of religion, not unanimity in its beliefs or practice.

Since the nation’s earliest days, the values of religious liberty and pluralism have been central to the American democratic experiment. The Declaration of Independence recognizes that there are some rights so inherent, they cannot be taken away by the government. When the Constitution and Bill of Rights were ratified, they stated plainly a commitment to religious freedom and an opposition to the favoritism of one religious tradition or viewpoint by the government. The government cannot impose a religion on the people or play favorites with religion.

These rights are essential to achieving democracy. People must have the soul freedom to believe and worship or to choose not to worship without state interference. Those freedoms are also essential to religious pluralism—living in a society where people of differing faiths and no-faith co-exist all together.

Tragically, over the past year, our own federal government has trampled on these values. The president has used social media accounts and AI-generated images to depict himself as a religious figure—Jesus Christ. This episode was offensive to those who practice the Christian tradition as well as those who do not. It is in a theocracy where the government leader is viewed as a god or god-like figure. Societies such as ancient Egypt, the Japanese Empire until 1945, or modern-day Iran represent theocracies, not democracies. Attempts to normalize images of the president as a god or god-like figure or deity threaten our democracy—as do attempts to prioritize one religious tradition over others.

This is what happened when President Trump issued an executive order establishing a so-called Religious Liberty Commission. The commission’s membership unlawfully consists exclusively of Christians and one Orthodox Jewish rabbi, “all of whom collectively represent the narrow perspective that America was founded as a ‘Judeo-Christian’ nation and must be guided by Biblical principles.” No members of the commission represent other religions such as Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, or Sikhism; nonreligious Americans; or Christians and Jewish people who do not ascribe to the narrow ideology of the commission’s members. Interfaith Alliance, Muslims for Progressive Values, the Sikh American Legal Defense and Education Fund, and Hindus for Human Rights united to file a lawsuit challenging the commission’s unlawful creation. Democracy Forward is honored to represent this impressive multifaith coalition, in partnership with our co-counsel Americans United for Separation of Church and State, to defend the values of religious liberty and pluralism. There are countless other examples of suits we and other organizations are filing to protect religious liberty and pluralism.

We seek to live in a democracy, not a theocracy. The separation of church and state is paramount to our democracy—and it is worth fighting for. We are proud to join the Interfaith Alliance in that important work.

Across the country, faith communities are demanding their right to welcome the stranger, feed the hungry, and visit the prisoner. And even in the face of public and private violence, threats, surveillance, and criminal charges, faith communities are winning in federal courts—and, perhaps more importantly—in the court of public opinion.

In Arizona, a district court found that people of faith had the religious right to leave food and water in a desert where migrants had died of dehydration. A California court found that a pastor had the religious right to minister to migrants waiting in Mexico to cross the border. Courts in Maryland and Massachusetts held that congregations have the right to worship together without the specter of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) arresting congregants. Judges in Illinois and Minnesota found that faith leaders have the right to provide pastoral care to those languishing in horrific detention centers. Other religious freedom cases have been filed by undocumented women taking shelter in sanctuary churches, faith leaders attacked by Department of Homeland Security (DHS) agents while praying outside detention centers, and migrants whose detention or deportation would leave them vulnerable to religious persecution or without access to spiritual practices such as mass.

Even if some of these cases are denied or overturned, something meaningful has already shifted in the discourse of religious freedom—what it means and whom it protects. For years, talk of “religious liberty” has conjured up images of corporations denying healthcare and businesses shutting their doors to same-sex couples. It has been seen by many as a threat to be contained rather than a fundamental human, civil, and constitutional right. At long last, the faith-based immigrants’ rights movement is offering us a new vision of religious freedom in action.

As migrants demand a right to their own spiritual lives, practices, and communities in the face of government threats, and as citizens step up to defend their neighbors as a matter of faith, we are witnessing a powerful reminder of the possibilities and demands of true religious freedom—a right for humans, not corporations, a right that enhances rather than undermines human dignity. My fellow contributor to this volume, the Rev. Dr. Corey D. B. Walker, has referred to the U.S. Civil Rights Movement as an example of “religious freedom marching.” In today’s movement for immigrant justice, we again see religious freedom marching—in the desert, at the border, outside detention centers, at houses of worship, and sometimes, into courthouses.

When I was in school, they used to teach that the establishment clause and the free exercise clause were in tension with each other. The theory was that the free exercise clause promotes and expands religious worship but the establishment clause confines and controls it.

But this was a completely distorted and erroneous way of thinking about the Constitution and Thomas Jefferson’s beautiful metaphor of the “wall of separation” between church and state. Our history teaches us that both religion clauses advance the essential value of the religious freedom of the people, and the two clauses stand best when they stand together. And the meaning of both is further enriched and illuminated by the little-known but crucially important third religion clause—Article VI, Clause 3, which forbids any religious test for public office.

Free exercise means that everyone is free to worship and believe as he or she sees fit so long as your religious practice does not violate a religiously neutral, universally applicable law. For example, all religions must respect laws against animal cruelty. On the other hand, a state or municipality cannot gerrymander the law to target and ban the unnecessary killing of animals in a religious context when the same rule does not apply generally to secular slaughterhouses. That is the meaning of the Supreme Court’s powerful free exercise decision in Church of the Lukumi Babalu Aye v. City of Hialeah in 1993.

The establishment clause similarly protects minority religious adherents and freethinkers from impositions of religious doctrine by religious majorities that capture state power. That is why the current appeal of the 5th Circuit’s 9-8 decision in 2026 in Rabbi Nathan v. Alamo Heights Independent School District is so important. This anomalous and provocative decision upheld a Texas law mandating prominent display of the Ten Commandments in every public school classroom in the state.

The 5th Circuit decision directly contradicts the Supreme Court’s excellent establishment clause ruling in Stone v. Graham (1980), invalidating a similar Ten Commandments state compulsory display law. The Supreme Court recognized such a law as a deliberate state endorsement of a particular religious creed and monotheistic doctrine and thus a blatant violation of the rights of religious minorities such as Hindus, Muslims, atheists, and those who recognize a different version of the Ten Commandments than the one being displayed. (There are multiple renderings of the Ten Commandments; some of them have more like 9 or 12 commandments.) We might add that the compulsory posting of the Ten Commandments is a violation of the rights of children even in the religious majority, who also have a right not to be propagandized by their government. Under the establishment clause, the state cannot declare an eternal religious code or truth for anyone. Everyone has the right to evolve and change their views under the First Amendment, a strong implication of both the religion clauses and the speech clause. The Constitution protects intellectual inquiry, experimentation, and progress for everyone.

These constitutional commitments have given us more religious freedom—and more freedom from religious coercion and imposition—than any people on earth. These enduring values are a great triumph of the framers, those luminous Enlightenment liberals who broke from centuries of religious warfare, superstition, Inquisition, holy crusades, and witchcraft trials to place government policy on the foundation of empirical reason and the social contract on the basis of the unalienable rights and freedoms of the people. The confluence of the religion clauses with the rights of free speech and free press have created a dynamic of free thought and freedom fighting in our country that have brought us ever closer to Abraham Lincoln’s tantalizing ideal of government “of the people, by the people and for the people.”

This doesn’t mean, of course, that we are home free and that freedom is never under attack. There is always backsliding. There are always efforts to dress up agendas of authoritarian social power in religious garb and then to impose them on the people.

I recently saw one of my colleagues on the House floor arguing for a school prayer constitutional amendment. He said that the “moral downfall of America was in 1962 with the Supreme Court’s decision in Engel v. Vitale, which banned prayer in public schools.” I rose to correct him by saying that the Supreme Court never banned prayer in public schools. As long as there are pop math quizzes, there will be prayer in the public schools in America. Anyone can pray when he or she wants to. The court simply found that the government cannot choose a religious script of its own preference and then compel your children to utter it. What a beautiful synthesis of our religion clause values. No establishment and free exercise for all.

My father, a beloved congregational rabbi and local interfaith leader for 60 years, and my mother, a volunteer activist in a range of women’s rights and civil rights nongovernmental organizations, managed to travel the globe, visiting 80 countries, mostly before jet planes were a norm—at times taking my brother and me along. Everywhere they went, they visited Jewish communities, many beleaguered, as well as met with non-Jewish religious leaders. The awareness of the world’s diverse religious communities, the challenges they faced, and the courage those communities manifested in standing up for what they believed was baked into my childhood and would animate much of my life’s engagement with the cause of religious liberty for all.

Here in America, most particularly in the second half of the 20th century, the Supreme Court’s rulings and congressional passage of laws embodying robust application of our First Amendment rights, together with the 14th Amendment’s promise of civil rights, changed things dramatically for women, Blacks, Latinos, Asians, LGBTQ+ individuals, those with disabilities, and Jews, who had faced a wide array of discriminatory restrictions in universities, housing, and employment. But with the expansion of civil rights and as the post-World War II powerful cultural constraints on expressing antisemitic and other racist attitudes slowly took hold, Jews moved from the peripheries of American society to the very center of American political, academic, economic, and cultural life. The result was a nation that has given the Jewish people more rights, more freedoms, and more opportunity than we have ever known in 2,500 years of diaspora Jewish life.

Today, so much of that feels imperiled as we witness an increase in hate speech and hate crimes (including those targeting houses of worship and Sikhs and Muslims, along with alarming increases of antisemitism). We face an administration acting to undermine our nation’s democracy and democratic institutions: the rule of law; freedoms of speech and the press; and our courts, our judges, and our law firms. At the same time, the rise of Christian nationalism is aggressively asserting that the Christian religion in America should be formally woven into American laws, politics, and education.

All of this is being abetted by a Supreme Court that has abandoned its long-held precedents of robust establishment clause protections and a constructive balance between the free exercise and establishment clauses. Instead, the court has seemingly bought into the Christian right’s argument that the establishment clause and the wall separating church and state is somehow anti-God or anti-religion. So too, as I write, it appears that the Trump administration’s so-called Religious Liberty Commission (comprised solely of Christians, with one Orthodox rabbi, in the most religiously diverse nation on earth) is embracing that view—when nothing could be further from the truth. It has been that wall keeping government out of religion that has allowed religion to flourish with a diversity and strength unmatched anywhere in the democratic world (except India) including all those democracies with government-preferred, government-subsidized, and government-established religions.

And the high court’s overly expansive application of the free exercise clause, even in the face of the government’s compelling interest in protecting the schema of our core civil rights laws, is encouraging people to make an array of religious claims to violate the civil rights of others. This threatens to undermine one of our nation’s greatest achievements and further inflame our nation’s polarization.

Restoring the balance between free exercise and nonestablishment, as well as between religious freedom claims and civil right protections, is the most urgent religious liberty challenge America faces. If we do it right, we can enhance our national comity. If we do it wrong, our divisions will be inflamed and contribute to the undermining of democracy and religious freedom for all.

Religious liberty, to me, is both deeply personal and fundamentally about public policy. As a first-generation, South Asian, Sikh woman, I carry with me the lived understanding of what it means to be visibly different in this country and how critical it is that our laws and systems protect that difference.

Growing up, I saw how faith can be a source of strength, identity, and community. But I also saw how easily that same visibility can make communities vulnerable—to bias, to exclusion, and at times to outright harm. Those experiences shape how I approach my policy work today. Religious liberty is not an abstract ideal; it is about whether people, especially those from minority faiths, can move through the world safely and with dignity.

I have seen how religious freedom can either function as a shield that protects pluralism or be misused in ways that undermine it. When it is applied equitably, it ensures that no one faith is privileged over another and that individuals are not forced to choose between their beliefs and their rights. That balance is essential in a diverse democracy.

In recent months, we have seen a troubling erosion of core rights under the banner of “religious freedom,” from efforts to expand religious exemptions that allow discrimination in healthcare and public services, to policies that blur the line between church and state in education, to rhetoric and actions that marginalize religious minorities. These are not abstract shifts; they have real consequences for who can access care, who feels safe in their community, and whose beliefs are treated as legitimate.

Efforts to redefine religious liberty in narrow, exclusionary ways risk turning a foundational protection into a mechanism for harm—one that privileges certain beliefs while undermining the rights of others. As we approach America’s 250th anniversary, we must be clear-eyed about these threats and recommit to a vision of religious freedom that is inclusive, grounded in equity, and responsive to the realities of a pluralistic society. Religious liberty must remain a protection for all, not a tool for some.

Faith remains an integral and vital part of our public life, though we must guard against it being weaponized for coercive or sectarian purposes. The beauty and brilliance of our Constitution’s First Amendment is that it protects the free exercise of religion for people of all faiths and of no faith, which includes in the public square, while prohibiting laws that establish a particular religion. As Thomas Jefferson pointedly said, “The legitimate powers of government extend to such acts only as are injurious to others. But it does me no injury for my neighbour to say there are twenty gods, or no god. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg.” People can’t help but bring their individual faiths into the public square because for so many it represents an essential part of who they are and what shapes their values and worldview.

It is also both unrealistic and unwise to banish faith from the public square. Doing so would both violate the First Amendment and be detrimental to our civic health. We can look to the transformational role that faith has played in so many of our nation’s social and reform movements throughout history, from abolition and civil rights to environmental protection and suffrage, to name just a few.

The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. has a famous quote that offers essential guardrails around how institutional religion should show up in the public square: “The church must be reminded once again that {it} is not to be the master or the servant of the state, but the conscience of the state.” In other words, both the state and faith are compromised when a particular religion seeks to control the state and use the power of the state to impose itself on the rest of the country. This is why Christian nationalism poses such a threat to both the church and to our democracy because it often seeks to privilege and impose its ideology and narrow version of Christianity on the rest of the country. Another important principle is that even as people of faith show up with their authentic beliefs to discussions and debates about public policy, they must be able to translate their faith beliefs and priorities into more universal and civic terms to persuade others and win the contest of ideas in our democratic system. Harnessing the positive contributions of faith in public life while preventing the misuse and abuse of faith in our public square represents a vital way in which we can form a “more perfect union” and fulfill the promise of “liberty and justice for all.”

Every day, I work alongside thousands of deeply committed women who are determined to uphold the principles and values of our democratic system of government. We believe in the infinite worth of souls and feel that democracy affirms that worth by granting each of us the opportunity to exercise self-determination and share responsibility for our society. Collaborating within a faith-based organization, we draw on our mutual and cherished understanding of what it means to act out our Christian discipleship as citizens.

While these values are not unique to us, our expression of them is, because we are stepping forward as members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. As a faith, we make up a little more than 1 percent of the U.S. population, and our status as a very small minority will always prohibit us from exercising raw electoral power. But in a pluralistic society, this minority status is not an obstacle to meaningful participation in political and civic life.

Instead, pluralism creates an environment in which we can exert a positive and collaborative influence. Our contributions and expressions are amplified to the degree to which we work alongside individuals of many differing beliefs—each of us bringing our unique gifts into play. Religious liberty has given us space to thrive while maintaining our chosen way of life. For a religious minority such as ours, pluralism is not simply a theoretical construct but a critical value that secures our well-being and unlocks our potential to contribute.

Religious liberty, to me, means that every person should be able to live in dignity and safety with their deepest beliefs intact—whether they are religious, spiritual, questioning, or nonreligious. It is not the right of the powerful to impose their worldview on everyone else. It is the protection of conscience. It is the promise that in a truly plural democracy, we do not have to become the same to belong.

As a Hindu and as the executive director of Hindus for Human Rights (HfHR), I carry this understanding into both my faith and my work. At HfHR, we speak out for the rights and dignity of all people—Hindus, Muslims, Christians, Sikhs, Jews, Buddhists, Dalits, atheists, and so many others. We believe religion should never be used to exclude, dominate, or dehumanize. Faith, at its best, calls us to humility, courage, and solidarity with those most vulnerable.

I often think of the story of Krishna lifting Govardhan Mountain to shelter the community from a terrible storm. In that story, Krishna holds up the mountain to protect the entire village, turning divine power into an act of refuge rather than control. That image has stayed with me—it is what religious freedom should be: a shelter, not a weapon.

What is at stake now is whether religious liberty will remain a shield for the vulnerable or be distorted into a sword for the powerful. If it is used to erode civil rights, undermine the separation of church and state, or privilege one religion over others, then it betrays its deepest purpose.

For our country to flourish, religious freedom must remain a promise for everyone—something that protects difference, nurtures belonging, and reminds us that none of us is free unless all of us are free. If we lose that promise, we endanger not only religious minorities and the nonreligious, but the democratic soul of this country itself.

Reflecting on the crises of the 20th century, noted political philosopher Hannah Arendt spoke of “dark times” when light does not altogether disappear but when it is obscured, when truth is hidden, speech is distorted, and our capacity to see one another is diminished. In such moments, the shared principles and practices that bind communities together erode and, in the familiar words of Karl Marx, “all that is solid melts into air.” Ours is such a time.

Religious freedom, long regarded as a founding promise of American democracy, now stands battered. It is invoked with increasing frequency by the current administration, yet too often in ways that narrow rather than expand its meaning. Under the pressure of authoritarian populism and nationalist religion, religious freedom is being reinterpreted not as a safeguard for pluralism but as a mechanism for privileging Christianity. This is a deeply disturbing and dark turn in American political life and democratic development.

Since taking office for a second time, the Trump administration has issued a number of executive orders on religion that undermine religious freedom. These executive orders, issued across federal agencies, seek to fundamentally reshape how religious freedom is interpreted and practiced. Indeed, instead of religious freedom for all believers and none, the Trump administration is intent on elevating Christianity as the most favored religion for the United States.

Properly understood, religious freedom is not the right of the powerful to impose their beliefs, nor a license for the majority to secure cultural and political dominance. It is, rather, a civic and political commitment to protect the freedom of belief, practice, and nonbelief on equal terms within a pluralistic society. It is rooted in the recognition that human dignity exceeds any single tradition. In this sense, religious freedom is not only a constitutional arrangement; it is a moral discipline that requires restraint, reciprocity, and a willingness to truly host human difference.

At the nation’s founding, religious freedom emerged contested and incomplete. While the protections of the First Amendment signaled a break from older political models of state-sanctioned religion, these commitments coexisted with profound social and civic exclusions of enslavement, settler dispossession, and a Protestant cultural dominance that intimately shaped the early republic. Religious freedom, like American democracy, has never been a settled achievement. It has been and remains a site of struggle over which the very meaning of freedom has been contested and expanded.

What is at stake now is nothing less than the fate and future of democracy in America. When the language of religious freedom is deployed to justify exclusion, to deny the dignity of others, or to fuse national identity with a singular religious vision, it ceases to function as religious freedom at all. It becomes, instead, a vehicle of domination. The wedding of authoritarian populism with nationalist religious claims poses a pronounced threat to America’s experiment with democracy. This is not a matter of partisan disagreement or a minor political dispute; it is a fundamental antagonism over the very meaning of freedom, equality, and our common life together.

While we mark the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, we must honestly confront the reality that the United States has only approximated a multiracial pluralist democracy for a relatively brief period of its history. The expansion of rights and recognition that have been hard won remains uneven and incomplete. Religious freedom has been both a resource in these struggles and a language and framework to resist these advances.

In dark times, the task is neither to abandon this foundational principle nor to allow its co-optation in a political project that denies and denigrates the freedom and liberty of all believers and none. Religious freedom is central to the very idea and practice of democracy in the modern world. Indeed, when the authoritarian impulse in our current national government seeks to enlist Christianity as an ally and partner, democracy declines and liberty languishes.

Paul Tillich once observed that “the boundary is the best place for acquiring knowledge.” The boundary is not a place of comfort. It is a site of encounter, risk, and tension. Yet it is precisely there—at the boundary of traditions, between belief and nonbelief and between power and vulnerability—that the meaning of religious freedom is most fully disclosed. In our current conjuncture, this boundary is where we must confront the theological and political pressures of authoritarianism.

To dwell within this boundary is to refuse an old politics of statecraft thinly disguised as American renewal. It is to cultivate a practice of deep democracy that honors the worth, value, and dignity of all and makes possible new ways of living together. Religious freedom in dark times demands nothing less.

With magnificent artistry, God created humankind to live in harmony with one another and all creation. Out of this deep theological understanding, The United Methodist Church affirms with resounding clarity the right of all persons to religious freedom in the United States and in all places in the world. We condemn attitudes, statements, and actions that denigrate or demean persons belonging to or exploring other faiths.

The United Methodist Church celebrates diversity of religious expression, belief, and practice. In ecumenical and interfaith relationships, we seek to receive the gifts, insight, and wisdom of others. We believe that we have much to learn in expansive community and riches to share generously with one another.

We celebrate authentic spiritual leadership in religious communities of faith, and we denounce attempts to silence the voices of those who speak truth to those in political leadership.

We are actively engaged in confronting the powers of the present time, challenging narratives that exclude, marginalize, and demean others. We denounce narratives of Christian nationalism; erasure of truthful public history; and tactics that promote suspicion, fear, and violence.

The Council of Bishops of The United Methodist Church has published a guide for learning and reflection. We commend to you this resource, ”Building Beloved Community: The Courage to Love in the Face of Tyranny.” We pray that groups will use this resource for deep conversation leading to faithful, courageous witness in this time of challenge and great danger.

Religious freedom sparked a profound interfaith love within me, after half a life of commitments bound by one way of being and a quiet knowing that my spirit yearned for more. Religious freedom is how I left a spiritual community after 15 years of devotion, no longer at peace with charismatic male authority. These were not acts of abandonment but honesty—in pursuit of a deeper, more truthful relationship with myself. At its core, religious freedom protects precisely this kind of movement: the right to believe, practice, change, or reject religion without coercion or fear. It honors a basic human truth: Our spiritual lives are always evolving in ways that are difficult to predict and even harder to pin down. When I imagine only one way to be in relationship with myself, I make God small. But each time I recite “Allahu akbar,” I’m reminded that God is greater—greater than our logic, our frameworks, and our feeble attempts to bound the infinite.

Yet we are witness to a troubling shift. Religious liberty is increasingly invoked not as a protection for all but as a privilege for some. To reduce the vastness of human experience to a single acceptable path is not only a theological imposition by the state; it is the unraveling of democracy. If our lives are ever-unfolding, then religious freedom must remain wide enough to hold that journey in all its complexity. When some are denied the freedom to examine their most cherished beliefs with honesty and depth, the very conditions that make democratic life possible begin to erode. Religious freedom, at its best, lets us question, grow, and return to ourselves with ever deeper honesty. It is this kind of freedom—expansive and alive—that both faith and democracy require to endure.

On the 250th birthday of this country, these voices underscore how religious freedom has shaped our history and how it continues to cultivate a pluralistic society in which people of all religions and none are free to flourish. This founding freedom, central to the preservation of U.S. democracy and vital to ensuring equality, will protect our ability to believe, think, and practice as we desire, so long as we continue to defend it.

Interfaith Alliance is a network of people of diverse faiths and beliefs from across the country working together to build a resilient democracy and fulfill America’s promise of religious freedom and civil rights not just for some, but for all.

The American Humanist Association strives to bring about a progressive society where being good without a god is an accepted and respected way to live life. Humanists believe that science tells us what’s real and compassion tells us what’s right, with the dignity of every human being as the foundation of our values. For over 80 years, the AHA has defended civil liberties and secular governance, built community among the growing number of people without traditional religion, and advanced the humanist worldview nationwide.

Americans United for Separation of Church and State brings together people of all religions and none to protect everyone’s freedom to live as themselves and believe as they choose—and stop anyone from using their beliefs to harm others. Founded in 1947, Americans United is the only organization dedicated solely to defending the separation of church and state. AU fights in the courts, legislatures, and the public square for freedom without favor and equality without exception.

The Center for American Progress is an independent, nonpartisan policy institute that is dedicated to improving the lives of all Americans through bold, progressive ideas, as well as strong leadership and concerted action. Its aim is not just to change the conversation, but to change the country.

We are grateful to everyone who shared their perspectives about religious freedom. Each contribution is unique and valuable. The people who have lent their voices and the organizations that worked on the report do not necessarily all share the same views or endorse everything contained in the report.