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SPEARHEADING SOCIAL REFORM
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The Church of Scientology has been at the forefront of efforts to preserve religious freedom and human rights.
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Establishing Religious Freedom Week
With the groundswell of public support for religious freedom generated by Church of Scientology initiatives, leaders of other mainstream religions joined in petitioning the US Congress to enact an annual national Religious Freedom Week.
The original Religious Freedom Week resolution was enacted by the president of the United States on September 20, 1988, and has now become an annual national tradition.
The Religious Freedom Week celebrations, in which churches of nearly every faith participate, have brought about a renewed awareness throughout the country of the importance of defending the right for all citizens to practice their faith according to their own conscience.
In 1995, the same coalition which made Religious Freedom Week a reality tackled a new yet related issue: resolving the contentious debate over the role of religion in public schools. The Church’s interest was more than incidental. The suppression of religion in all aspects of society, including education, has clearly contributed to a catastrophic decline in morality; yet it was equally important to keep schoolchildren from having religious views imposed upon them in an educational context.
The coalition found the answers within the fabric of the Constitution itself and seminal Supreme Court cases. Expanding their ranks to include more than three dozen religious and civil liberties organizations, the coalition prepared “Religion in The Public Schools: A Joint Statement of Current Law,” which clearly and concisely set forth the true state of US law pertaining to religion and religious expression in public schools – and, for many, led to amicable resolution of the issue. President Bill Clinton praised the joint statement as “wise and thoughtful.”
 
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