Who has the primary right and responsibility to guide children’s religious upbringing—the state, or parents?

This question is no longer theoretical. Across North America, religious liberty is under pressure from both the political left and right, and nowhere are the consequences more immediate than in education.

Seventh-day Adventists have long been known for our commitment to education through our schools, colleges, and universities. Yet in Canada and the United States, new laws and policies increasingly test our ability to maintain school communities that faithfully reflect our beliefs, values, and religious identity.

In public education, the challenge is different but just as serious. Adventists have always upheld the biblical principle of church-state separation. Religious freedom for all is best protected when government does not favor, fund, or promote one religious viewpoint over another. Yet in some places, we are seeing renewed efforts to bring state-approved religious instruction into public school classrooms.

For more than 120 years, Seventh-day Adventists in North America have supported the mission of Liberty magazine as it carries our distinctive, prophetic message of religious freedom to lawmakers, judges, attorneys, educators, and community leaders. This message resists political extremes and stands firmly for two principles: clear church-state separation and strong protection for the religious liberty rights of every person of faith.

Your support is needed now. With your help, Liberty magazine and Public Affairs and Religious Liberty leaders across the North American Division will continue speaking with clarity, courage, and hope.

Even as today’s conflicts grow more urgent, we look beyond the turmoil of earthly kingdoms to the promise of Christ’s coming kingdom. Religious liberty challenges will continue to come, but our confidence remains secure: Christ has already won the final victory.

On Religious Liberty Sabbath, we celebrate this hope-filled message. It gives us clarity in a world of chaos and a mission to share it with a society that needs it more than ever.

Your offering today directly supports efforts to defend religious freedom in courts and legislatures across the North American Division. These vital rights include:

• The freedom to speak and act on our beliefs in public.
• The ability to run our schools and institutions according to our Seventh-day Adventist identity.
• The right to honor God by keeping the Sabbath, even in the workplace.

Thank you for standing with us in sharing this God-given gift of liberty of conscience. Thank for your offering and your sponsored subscriptions to Liberty magazine. Together, through prayer and action, we can continue to hold high the “banner of truth and religious liberty” until our Lord returns. (Acts of the Apostle, 68)