By KENNETH LIPP/YachatsNews
YACHATS – Yachats’ mayor declined to read a Religious Freedom Day proclamation during the city council’s second meeting of the year, and it’s unclear how the text — lifted directly from a 2021 proclamation by then-President Donald Trump — made its way onto the agenda.
Religious Freedom Day — Jan. 16 — commemorates the Virginia General Assembly’s 1786 adoption of a law authored by Thomas Jefferson that became the basis for the establishment clause of the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.
It is not a national holiday, but it was recognized by an act of Congress in 1992, and President George H.W. Bush issued the first national proclamation as one of his last acts in office in January 1993.
During Yachats City Council’s regular meeting Jan. 18, a Religious Freedom Day proclamation was listed in the council’s consent agenda, which contains items of a routine nature typically approved without discussion, along with two resolutions.
“One of the items on the consent agenda was a proclamation,” said mayor Craig Berdie.
City manager Heide Lambert interjected to say it was an odd place for such an item — a proclamation should be separate from resolutions and resolutions should be voted on.
“I’m not comfortable at all reading the proclamation,” Berdie said. “I don’t see anyone who sponsored it here. I don’t know where it came from.”
“It’s just on our calendar,” Lambert said.
“Well I’m not comfortable reading it, and some of the other councilors have concerns,” Berdie said. “We are not going to read or sign that.”
President Joe Biden issued Religious Freedom Day proclamations in 2023 and in 2022. But the text before council last week was lifted directly from Trump’s Jan. 15, 2021 proclamation and differs significantly from his successor’s.
For example, Trump’s proclamation makes no reference to religious freedom for non-believers, while Bidens’ proclamations explicitly name atheists as among those entitled to the First Amendment’s protections.
The text in the Yachats city council’s packet also includes a first-person a reference to the Trump administration’s holding “foreign governments accountable for trampling — in many cases, egregiously so — on religious liberty.” Biden’s proclamations, naturally, refer to his own administration’s initiatives in the first person.
The proclamation in the council’s packet did not contain the entirety of Trump’s proclamation, but all of the words that appear in it are taken directly from the former president’s 2021 text.
YachatsNews’ review of the council’s January agendas since 2018 uncovered no previous references to Religious Freedom Day. Likewise, Toledo, Lincoln City and Waldport don’t appear to have had a religious freedom day proclamation in recent years. Newport mayor Dean Sawyer, a longtime member of the city council, said he couldn’t recall any such proclamation there.
Lambert later told YachatsNews the proclamation ended up on the agenda because of a misunderstanding between herself, deputy city recorder Kimmie Jackson and the mayor.
- Kenneth Lipp is YachatsNews’ full-time reporter and can be reached at KenLipp@YachatsNews.com
Congratulations! Pivotal time in Yachats — houseless, water, etc. and you waste time on this?
100 % agree
Reading the proclamation would have been the waste of time. Religious liberty has become a code phrase for right wing extremists trying to push their theocratic beliefs on everyone else and censor attempts to fight racism and homophobia . Good for the Yachats Council in ignoring this
100% agree
We don’t need a day to celebrate “religious freedom.”
We already have it, and “religious liberties” are not under attack. I’m glad the council declined to recognize this day.
But wait a minute. Where did this come from? Get the whole story yachatsnews.