Opinion | National Day of Prayer should be abolished

When the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom passed in 1786, James Madison, its champion, wrote to Thomas Jefferson, its author, “I flatter myself we have in this country extinguished forever the ambitious hope of making laws for the human mind.”

Not so fast, Jim.

This week, the United States will celebrate an official National Day of Prayer, as it has every year since 1952.

The National Day of Prayer kicked off a profusion of official endorsements of religion: the National Prayer Breakfast (1953); “under God” in the Pledge of Allegiance (1954); a Congressional Prayer Room in the U.S. Capitol (1955); “In God We Trust” as the U.S. motto (1956), on our money (1957) and inscribed on the rostrum of the speaker of the House (1962).

Of those, it is the most benign. It’s less ubiquitous than the cash we handle, less coercive than a pledge that schoolchildren recite every day, less freighted with significance than a permanent fixture in the People’s House. A person might absolutely ignore the National Day of Prayer as she ignores other holidays that grant neither time off nor an excuse to drink green beer.

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But we shouldn’t ignore it. We should get rid of it.

The courts have argued that these assertions of religiosity are essentially meaningless — declaring them “ceremonial” or “civic” in order to find them constitutional. Supposedly nonsectarian, they presume belief in a monotheistic God, and they lean distinctly Christian, with some “Judeo” thrown in. The National Day of Prayer, which was suggested by the Rev. Billy Graham on the steps of the Capitol during a huge evangelical revival, was promoted as an idea that “all creeds can join in whether they be Catholic, Protestant or Jew.”

So “all” is approximate, I guess.

But the problem isn’t that our religious laws fail to include everyone. The problem is that we have religious laws.

Perhaps you believe, as I once did, that government displays of religious piety are no big deal. An unflattering feature of American culture — like shopping malls — not one of its fatal flaws, like gun violence. After all, there’s no penalty for not praying on the National Day of Prayer.

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Or perhaps you believe that religion should play a part in our official civic life because our Founding Fathers were Christians who based the Constitution on Christian principles. That’s the argument Sen. Absalom Willis Robertson (D) used to promote the idea of the National Day of Prayer and the one Donald Trump used to promote Bibles.

There is, indeed, a strong religious bent to the debates and documents that established our nation’s principles. The Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom — the precursor to our First Amendment establishment and free exercise clauses — begins, “Whereas, Almighty God hath created the mind free” and points out that God himself does not force anyone to worship “as was in His Almighty power to do.”

The precursor to that statute was Madison’s (anonymous) “Memorial and Remonstrance Against Religious Assessments,” which argues that “the policy of the Bill” — a tax to pay Christian teachers — “is adverse to the diffusion of the light of Christianity.”

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“Whilst we assert for ourselves a freedom to embrace, to profess and to observe the Religion which we believe to be of divine origin, we cannot deny an equal freedom to those whose minds have not yet yielded to the evidence which has convinced us.”

So, yes, I’m happy to state that the nation’s Founders were believers — and also that their belief strengthened their resolve to do a most remarkable thing: create a Constitution that leaves out God altogether.

Stipulated: no religious test for office. Article Six, Clause 3.

Omitted: the words “so help me God” in the presidential oath of office. Article II, Section 1, Clause 8.

Determined: that government stay out of the business of religion entirely. Amendment 1. “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.”

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It’s kind of beautiful, this radical thing, this first-in-the-world separation of church and state.

And it’s under attack. Taxing citizens to pay for Christian teachers? Yes, we have that — in state school-voucher programs that fund religious schools and in the nation’s first publicly chartered religious school.

In the absurd question Rep. Rick Allen (R-Ga.) asked of Columbia University President Minouche Shafik at a congressional hearing on anti-Israel protests — “Do you want Columbia University to be cursed by God of the Bible?” — and in her feeble response: “Definitely not!”

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By comparison, the National Day of Prayer is pretty quaint. But it’s also how we got here, dangerously accustomed to incursions of religion into our political discourse.

The bill against which Madison’s pamphlet argued so vehemently was pretty mild, too. It privileged Christianity but not one particular sect; every church was eligible to receive funds. But to Madison, by degrading “from the equal rank of Citizens all those whose opinions in Religion do not bend to those of the Legislative authority,” the proposed bill differed “only in degree” from the Inquisition.

A law requiring the U.S. president to make an annual proclamation urging Americans to pray is still a law that involves the government in the religious lives — the human minds — of its citizens.

“It is proper to take alarm,” wrote Madison, “at the first experiment on our liberties.””

We failed to take alarm in 1952. On this year’s National Day of Prayer, I invite the citizens of our nation to join me in the fervent hope that it’s not too late.

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