Five days ago, a federal district judge in Wisconsin declared the National Day of Prayer unconstitutional because it allegedly violates the supposed separation of church and state.
In her ruling, U.S. District Judge Barbara Crabb (W.D.-Wis.) wrote, "the nature of prayer is so personal and can have such a powerful effect on a community that the government may not use its authority to try to influence an individual’s decision whether and when to pray.”
The judge's reasoning would surprise this nation's Founders, who, you will remember, at the urging of patriot and Massachusetts delegate Samuel Adams, then known as "the famous Adams," held an official two-hour prayer meeting during the First Continental Congress in Philadelphia. It would surprise the entire House of Burgesses in Colonial Williamsburg, Virginia, which officially set a Day of Prayer, Fasting, and Humiliation for its Virginia citizens, to stand alongside their Boston countrymen, when the British forces were first closing Boston harbor to enforce a blockade by King George, III.
It would also surprise the supposed Deist Dr. Benjamin Franklin, who offered an official resolution, which called for regular morning prayers to Almighty God as the delegates to the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia worked to draft our Constitution in 1787.
It would especially surprise Presidents George Washington, Abraham Lincoln and a host of other U.S. Presidents who have called for official National days of prayer and fasting throughout our 400-year history. It would also be a surprise to President Franklin D. Roosevelt, who called for National prayer during the June 6th, 1944, D-Day invasion of Europe. Our entire history and nation is both an example and an answer to prayer.
Despite the judge's uncalled-for concerns about official acts by government, the National Day of Prayer is an entirely voluntary event. You are invited to pray -- not mandated to join your fellow citizens in prayer.
The Rev. Franklin Graham, honorary chairman of the National Day of Prayer, said, "No judge can stop us from praying for our country and I pray that on May 6, millions of Americans will join me in praying for our President, all of our elected leaders, and even for this unjust judge and all those who rule from the bench—that God would guide them and give them wisdom.”
You can attend the National Day of Prayer observance at the Oklahoma State Capitol on Thursday, May 6, beginning at 11:30 a.m.
It wouldn't surprise James Madison, who had a central role in drafting the Constitution and the First Amendment. He confirmed that he understood them to "[s]trongly guard[] . . . the separation between Religion and Government." Madison, Detached Memoranda (~1820). He made plain, too, that they guarded against more than just laws creating state sponsored churches or imposing a state religion. Mindful that even as new principles are proclaimed, old habits die hard and citizens and politicians could tend to entangle government and religion (e.g., "the appointment of chaplains to the two houses of Congress" and "for the army and navy" and "[r]eligious proclamations by the Executive recommending thanksgivings and fasts"), he considered the question whether these actions were "consistent with the Constitution, and with the pure principle of religious freedom" and responded: "In strictness the answer on both points must be in the negative. The Constitution of the United States forbids everything like an establishment of a national religion."
ReplyDeleteThe First Amendment embodies the simple, just idea that each of us should be free to exercise his or her religious views without expecting that the government will endorse or promote those views and without fearing that the government will endorse or promote the religious views of others. By keeping government and religion separate, the establishment clause serves to protect the freedom of all to exercise their religion. Reasonable people may differ, of course, on how these principles should be applied in particular situations, but the principles are hardly to be doubted. Moreover, they are good, sound principles that should be nurtured and defended, not attacked. Efforts to undercut our secular government by somehow merging or infusing it with religion should be resisted by every patriot.
Wake Forest University recently published a short, objective Q&A primer on the current law of separation of church and state. I commend it to you. http://www.adl.org/religious_freedom/WFU-Divinity-Joint-Statement.pdf