By AMY STOREYIn an April 27 press release published in the Los Alamos Daily Post (link), Leilani Christensen is quoted as saying,“Our forefathers founded National Day Of Prayer. Many of them had escaped persecution for their beliefs in their homeland. In the news today, we see that people are still fleeing their homeland because of persecution.” [sic]
Our forefathers, the ones fleeing persecution, didn’t found the National Day of Prayer. (They also didn’t found this nation on prayer itself; in fact, they explicitly stated, in the Treaty of Tripoli, “the Government of the United States of America is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion.”)
The official National Day of Prayer was established in 1952, not 1776. The many problems with an official, government-sanctioned day of prayer are laid out nicely here by the Americans United for Separation of Church and State—an organization directed, incidentally, by a United Church of Christ minister.
Even if you accept the constitutionality and necessity of a National Day of Prayer, this particular gathering violates the principles by very clearly excluding non-Christians: “Bible-based believers in Jesus Christ will gather for prayer and worship on the Annual National Day of Prayer … at the Ashley Pond Pavilion.”
In 1983 the National Day of Prayer was specifically amended to be inclusive to non-Christians: “Revived as an annual observance by Congress in 1952, the National Day of Prayer has become a great unifying force for our citizens who come from all the great religions of the world. Prayer unites people.” [Emphasis ours.] Whether prayer actually does, in fact, unite people is an open question, but it certainly doesn’t unite people when non-Christians are deliberately excluded.
Indeed, it is ironic that the release states, “people are still fleeing their homeland because of persecution,” when the event’s organizers have deliberately excluded those very persecuted, fleeing people.
