January 16 marked the 227th anniversary of the adoption by the Virginia legislature of the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom, written by Thomas Jefferson and one of America’s foundational freedom documents. In recognition of that anniversary, President Obama again issued a Presidential Proclamation in honor of religious freedom.

The proclamation starts out on the wrong foot: “Foremost among the rights Americans hold sacred is the freedom to worship as we choose.” Yes, of course, but freedom of religion is vastly more than the freedom to worship, the freedom to engage in particular rituals inside a house of worship or in private devotional activities. Freedom of religion also encompasses “the right to practice our faith openly as we choose”; it is the “right to exercise our beliefs free from prejudice or persecution.” Those phrases are from the proclamation itself, which anchors these freedoms and rights in our Constitution and declares that religious freedom “is a universal human right . . . an essential part of human dignity” that must be respected, for “without it our world cannot know lasting peace.”

Important words, and important to stress them at this time in our nation’s history as our society becomes ever-more religiously and morally diverse. Religious freedom is a foundational American principle that requires mutual respect between citizens, governmental accommodation of the claims of conscience, and legal protection for citizens and organizations whose faith convictions lead them in a different direction than society’s consensus or the secularism required of government.