On January 6, 1941 President Franklin Delano Roosevelt addressed Congress in an effort to move the nation away from a foreign policy of neutrality. The president had watched with increasing anxiety as European nations struggled and fell to Hitler’s fascist regime and was intent on rallying public support for the United States to take a stronger interventionist role.
In that speech, Roosevelt declared that all people inalienably shared four freedoms, freedoms enshrined in one way or another, in our Constitution: the freedom of speech and expression, the freedom to worship God as one feels so moved to, freedom from want and freedom from fear. 
Norman Rockwell, At home, in Arlington, Vermont, was inspired. Rockwell was too old to enlist, but he wanted to make a statement in pictures why Americans were sending their boys to war. And he painted the Four Freedoms.
Today, at 4 pm, John Bollard and I will, as a part of the Four Freedoms Festival, ring our church bell for four minutes.
Skip to content
Whoever you are and wherever you are on life's journey, you're welcome here.