I've been getting email encouraging me to support local National Day of Prayer events two days from now.
Ugh.
Don't get me wrong. I believe deeply in the power of prayer to transform lives. I pray for our nation that it will protect the weak, serve the poor, promote justice and peace not through strength but mercy, and that all people will be recognized and honored with dignity and grace.
I pray for our nation for all I'm worth.
But I chafe at the government telling me I should pray.
National Day of Prayer has become nothing less than a religious-right attempt to eliminate true freedom of religion in the United States. It threatens the religious liberty that is at the heart of the First Amendment. And it does so as a wolf in sheep's clothing—by claiming that it is promoting religious liberty.
Who gave Congress permission to mandate that the President declare a day when Americans should pray? What part of "make no law respecting an establishment of religion" do we not understand?
Go to the website of the National Day of Prayer and you'll find a specific prayer the organizing committee, chaired by Shirley Dobson, is pushing on local observers nation-wide. It is written by an evangelical megachurch pastor, and it prays in specifically Christian terms and forms, even though Jesus is not mentioned by name.
Worse, it promotes the false idea that our nation has removed "Your Word" (by which the author of the prayer appears to mean the Bible, even though the Christian gospels consider Jesus to be God's Word) from our classrooms, courtrooms, and culture. As if it were government's role to promote religion! Then it calls on God to bring a spiritual revival that will turn the country once again back to God and thus heal our land.
I'm all for revival and healing, but I don't accept the vision Dobson and her crew promote. I do not begrudge anyone the right to pray as they see fit. I'll defend their right to the grave. But I also refuse to be complicit or silent when our nation sacrifices the very freedom on which we were founded to promote a narrow, misleading, sectarianism of any sort, mine or anyone else's.
We're a better country than this. And as Christians, we should be grateful for and not ashamed of the secular structure of government our founders envisioned. It's that very neutrality in matters of religion that guarantees our freedom to pray or not, as we choose.
I'm proud of the God and Country award I earned as a Boy Scout. I'm also passionate about preserving the freedom of those whose religion is different from mine as well as of those who profess no religion at all.
We Christians don't need a National Day of Prayer to work together for the people Jesus called us to serve: the poor, the hungry, the sick, the disabled, and the oppressed. We need a government that protects religion without promoting it, ensuring all of us the freedom to pray or not as we please.
National Day of Prayer misunderstands who we are as a nation. It also misunderstands the source and power of genuine uncoerced prayer.
Pray for our nation if you like on Thursday. I will. But don't do it because Congress passed a law requiring the President to tell you to do it. Pray because prayer is something you are already doing. Pray not because you must but, if you so choose, because you can.
Blessings and Peace.
To comment the way I would like, I think I had better write my own blog. Meanwhile, let me just say Amen and Amen. The thought of the government telling me when and how to pray really, really scares me ~ plus it is unconstitutional. Anyway - thank you. Clearly and well said.
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