National Day of Prayer

Recently a Federal Judge has declared the National Day of Prayer unconstitutional. Not being a lawyer or a constitutional scholar I have to leave some of the legal and technical matters to others. But I do have some questions and ramblings on this.

First, I know that we have in lots of communities, we have one in this community, preachers who turns the National Day of Prayer into a Christian evangelical revival. There are three or four scheduled events in different parts of our town, and every one is a full blown testimony to Jesus. So I can understand why it might be possible for a Federal Judge to see the National Day of Prayer as an effort to establish the Christian religion over others. That would be contrary to the law that Congress will make no law to establish one religion over another.

However, the establishing a National Day of Prayer does not necessarily have to establish one religion over another. From what I have read most other religions have a practice of prayer and meditation. Just like Thanksgiving Day declaration does not say one has to go into a Christian church, the proclamations recently that I have read call for people to go into their place of worship and give thanks. A National Day of Prayer is a day on which all people are invited to pray, like AA, to the higher power however they define or identify it. Certainly in these days of heated rhetoric it would be a good idea for all of us to take a moment to remember that neither side is perfect, that neither side is God and has all the answers, and neither side knows what the future brings because the future is in the hands of the mystery of tomorrow. It is not a bad thing to have a National Day of Prayer on which Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, Christians, Taoists, and all others lift up to the needs and the concerns of this country to the Holy One. Heaven knows, our country's power and pride need some kind of humbling.

Secondly, on a much more general note, it seems to me that we have a very confused and complicated public relationship with religion in our politics. When 9/11 happened nobody declared all those prayer services and worship events to be unconstitutional. When old Presidents die we don't rule their public funeral services to be unconstitutional. When all the candidates say "God Bless America" after all their speeches, no one I have heard files suit.

The old argument against the Ten Commandments in courtrooms always troubled me as well because they were declared offensive as the establishment of one religion over others. The Ten Commandments are part of the tradition of three, at least, major religions. God is not a term that is solely the property of Christianity. We all need to remember that. A National Day of Prayer is not addressed just to Christians.