Orrin Hatch: “a few weeks ago I inaugurated a series of speeches about religious freedom. In the first speech, I said that the rights…”

“a few weeks ago I inaugurated a series of speeches about religious freedom. In the first speech, I said that the rights of conscience and religious exercise go to the very heart of who we are as human beings and how we make sense out of this world. No decisions are more fundamental to human existence than those regarding our relationship to the Divine, and no act of government is more invasive of individual liberty than compelling a person to violate his or her sincerely chosen religious beliefs. This is why religious freedom in and of itself is so important and must be specially protected. Last week I spoke about religious freedom in practice here in America. At no time in world history has religious freedom been such an integral part of a nation's origin and character. As Congress said when we unanimously enacted the International Religious Freedom Act in 1998, the right to freedom of religion undergirds the very origin and existence of the United States. Professor Michael McConnell, director of the Constitutional Law Center at Stanford, describes how, by the time the Bill of Rights was ratified, America had ``already experienced 150 years of a higher degree of religious diversity than had existed anywhere in the world.'' Together, those two speeches told some of the story of religious freedom in America. Today I will build on that foundation and examine the status and the substance of religious freedom.…”