Secretary Rubio’s Religious Freedom Message Gets to the Heart of America
International Religious Freedom Day, which stems from the passage of the International Religious Freedom Act (IRFA), has been an annual celebration for the last 28 years – but perhaps never acknowledged more boldly than it was earlier this week.
Landmark bipartisan legislation signed into law by President Bill Clinton in 1998, the IRFA has sought to address the scourge of religious persecution around the world. At the ceremony signing back on October 27, 1998, the 42nd president stated, “The United States was founded on the right to worship freely and on respect for the right of others to worship as they believe.”
In the years since, IRFA has led to a more consistent and reliable documentation of persecution, information that public officials have used in negotiations and to promote greater accountability and transparency with foreign governments. Instead of it being an afterthought, recent U.S. administrations have made religious freedom a foundational principle.
Addressing the centrality of religious freedom in American policy back in 2001, President George W. Bush observed, “It is the first freedom of the human soul — the right to speak the words that God places in our mouths. We must stand for that freedom in our country. We must speak for that freedom in the world.”
During both of his tenures in the White House, President Donald Trump has likewise prioritized religious liberty.
“Religious freedom, America’s first freedom, is a moral and national security imperative,” President Trump has observed.
But earlier this week, the U.S. Department of State, under the leadership of Secretary of State Marco Rubio, marked International Religious Freedom Day not simply by affirming religious liberty as a fundamental principle but also by speaking very specifically about how it has shaped America.
In an inspirational video shared on social media on Tuesday, we see images of the Pilgrims as they sailed the oceans in search of religious freedom in the New World. The Puritans, who had broken away from the Church of England, came to America because they wanted to be allowed to practice their faith without any government intrusion.
The official 45-second spot distributed by the State Department is narrated by Secretary Rubio. He begins:
“Our faith calls us outwards into the limitless darkness of the unknown. It tells us to go forth and preach the Gospel to the world as a witness unto all nations unto the ends of the earth.”
Of course, Secretary Rubio is sharing Jesus’ command, also known as the Great Commission, which urges believers to “Go into all the world and preach the gospel to all creation” (Mark 16:15).
He then continues:
“From that command came America. Our nation, more than any other in history, was shaped by this Christian idea. This is who we are. And from the beginning, we have carried the belief that our country represents something new in the world. But the soul of our nation has always been rooted in an ancient faith.”
This isn’t the first time Secretary Rubio has acknowledged that Christianity has shaped Western civilization. Speaking in Germany earlier this year, he noted, “The men who settled and built the nation of my birth arrived on our shores carrying the memories and the traditions and the Christian faith of their ancestors as a sacred inheritance, an unbreakable link between the old world and the new.”
Critics of the State Department video object to Secretary Rubio’s emphasis on Christianity rather than giving equal attention to religious freedom for people of other faiths. But such concern ignores reality. As the Daily Wire’s Matt Walsh wrote on X, “It is simply a matter of historical fact that the American government from its founding was expressly in the business of promoting, defending, and promulgating Christianity. You might wish that had not been the case, but it was. And should still be.”
It’s also why America remains the world’s leader in championing religious freedom – and why we applaud Secretary Rubio’s principled pronouncement.
