Before the new administration takes office and we discover whether the unofficial new Department of Government Efficiency can set the country on a new course, or whether the “new boss” ends up being the “same as the old boss,” as Pete Townshend and The Who lament in 1971’s “Won’t Get Fooled Again,” I want to reflect on a recent rare occurrence.

To wit: December 25 marked not only the first of Christmas’s 12 days and the start of Hanukkah’s eight days. Since 1910, this is just the fifth time the two dates have aligned.

While the occurrence is rare, what isn’t rare is that we take it for granted in America when our neighbors celebrate different religious holidays.

Religious freedom is a fundamental American liberty. The Bill of Rights intentionally begins by stating that “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.” Religious liberty is so well established that we forget how innovative the principle was at the time of America’s founding.

Until Martin Luther launched the Reformation in 1517, there was only one church: the Church of Rome. For the next 130 years, religious wars devastated the European continent. They ended in 1648 after the Thirty Years’ War left one-third of Germany’s population dead. The resulting Peace of Westphalia established religious freedom in Europe, but only for princes and kings, not individuals. If your prince was Protestant, or Catholic, so must you be (or you could be tortured and killed).

Religious establishment remained the norm across Europe until relatively recently. Before 1829, Catholics in the United Kingdom could not vote, sit in Parliament or hold most public offices. Separation of church and state occurred in France in 1905. Until the 1970s, the Netherlands allowed religious groups to operate vertical “pillars,” controlling their members’ political, social and religious lives. Even today, at least nine European governments collect taxes on behalf of official churches.

Almost from the beginning, America was different. Many early colonists were fleeing religious persecution. While the Massachusetts Bay Colony imposed political and religious uniformity, within the first generation, Roger Williams founded Rhode Island (in 1636) as a refuge for religious tolerance. In 1649, Maryland passed the Toleration Act, the first of its kind in the world, establishing religious freedom for all its settlers. And it is no accident that protecting against religious establishment was at the top of the agenda of the Bill of Rights.

Returning to Hanukkah and Christmas, America was a welcome refuge not only to Christians but also to Jews fleeing religious persecution. Jacob Barsimson, the first known Jewish immigrant to America, arrived on August 22, 1654.

By the time of the Constitution in 1787, the total Jewish population of the United States was only about 2,500. Still, Jews played an outsized role in establishing religious liberty in the nation.

Throughout the summer of 1790, Jewish leaders from across the United States petitioned President George Washington to protect religious liberty, which he was known to champion. In August, he visited the Touro Synagogue in Newport, Rhode Island. The congregation gave him a warm welcome, and the rabbi offered him some thoughts on religious freedom, comparing the Revolutionary War to the struggles of the ancient tribes of Israel, and Washington to King David.

Later the same day, President Washington sent a letter to the congregation, responding that “ the Government of the United States … gives to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance (and) requires only that they who live under its protection should demean themselves as good citizens.” Religious freedom, he said, was not an “indulgence” that one class of people granted to another but one of their “inherent natural rights.”

In short, so long as new arrivals were willing and loyal participants in the American experiment in liberty, the government would protect their right to worship in their own way.

Today, 13 percent of asylum seekers to the United States are fleeing religious persecution, according to the Department of Homeland Security. They should be as welcome to us today as they were to George Washington.

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ABOUT THE WRITER

Frederic J. Fransen is president of Huntington (W.Va.) Junior College and CEO of Certell Inc. He wrote this for InsideSources.com.

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