As Juneteenth, also known as Freedom Day, draws near, we pause to consider what freedom means through the lens of faith. You might be surprised that The Star-Spangled Banner wasn’t officially adopted as the U.S. national anthem until March 3, 1931. But even then, not everyone in this country was truly free. Black Americans, Indigenous peoples, Asian Americans, and Latinx communities were still denied equal rights under the law. That familiar phrase, “the land of the free,” didn’t reflect everyone’s experience then, and it still challenges us today.

Juneteenth marks the day in 1865 when enslaved African Americans in Galveston, Texas, finally heard the news of their freedom: two and a half years after the Emancipation Proclamation was signed. This moment reminds us that freedom delayed is freedom denied. It pushes us to ask a deeper question: What does liberation look like now?