May 3, 2010

Constitution of Prayer

I was surprised to learn that an appeals court declared the National Day of Prayer unconstitutional. This seemed a bit odd, to say the least. At a time when many Americans have many religions according to which they pray, and many things to pray about, a day full of it is found to conflict with our country's founding document.

An argument in favor of the ruling would be that we can all pray on our own, and that the ruling removes any appearance of a government mandate for any particular prayer. From my perspective, this is not what the effect of the ruling is. The public perception will probably be that the government has just declared prayer illegal. The court, so far as most people can tell, has found that there's something wrong with prayer, so wrong that it can't coexist with our Constitution. However, the government determining that prayer is illegal would actually be a contravention of the First Amendment. I think that the appeals court has come very close to contravening that amendment by inhibiting the free exercise of prayer on the National Day of Prayer.

In any event, we are, for the moment, free to pray as we should choose. Let's exercise that right on the National Day of Prayer, or indeed, any other day. We don't need the government to tell us when to pray and when not to pray. With that said, let's watch carefully how this case continues to move. If courts can somehow find a National Day of Prayer unconstitutional, it may not be too long before they make prayer itself unconstitutional, even if it means contradicting the Constitution to do so.