Bill Donohue comments on President Trump’s address at today’s National Prayer Breakfast:
The most significant line in President Trump’s speech spoke about the right of Americans to “practice their beliefs without fear of hostility or fear of violence.”
He did not say we are entitled to our beliefs—no one can stop us from believing what we want anyway—he said we have a right to practice them. Thus did he separate himself from the language of Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, both of whom spoke about ensuring our “freedom to worship.”
That term suggests an insular right—the right to pray in church—and not the kind of full-throated exercise of religion as favored by the term “freedom of religion.”
Trump’s willingness to underscore our right to practice our religion rightly suggests that religious liberty is undermined if it does not entail our right to publicly act on it.
We predicted that Trump would be religion-friendly. He’s now making good on it.
