National Day of Prayer

The Baptist Joint Committee for Religious Liberty says of the National Day of Prayer:

In 1952, Congress passed a joint resolution, signed by President Harry Truman, setting aside one day a year for prayer. Since then, presidents have proclaimed a day for prayer observed each year on the first Thursday of May. On April 30, President Barack Obama issued the proclamation of a National Day of Prayer to be held on May 6.

"Prayer has been a sustaining way for many Americans of diverse faiths to express their most cherished beliefs, and thus we have long deemed it fitting and proper to publicly recognize the importance of prayer on this day across the Nation," the proclamation states.

The Obama Administration has announced it intends to appeal a federal judge's ruling in April that the statute establishing the National Day of Prayer is unconstitutional.

"There is nothing wrong with the American people getting together to pray on a designated day, even public officials," Hollman said. "In fact every day should be a day of national prayer.

"The problem with the National Day of Prayer is that it is an official act of the government urging citizens to engage in a religious exercise," Hollman said.

National Day of Prayer declared unconstitutional (as expected)

It was as inevitable as sunrise that a federal judge would declare the National Day of Prayer unconstitutional. Undeterred by theocratic pleas, U.S. District Judge Barbara B. Crabb of the Western District of Wisconsin applied clear logic. As Annysa Johnson of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported:

In her ruling, Crabb acknowledged the deep divide over the role of religion in America and the complex and often contradictory jurisprudence on the separation of church and state.

She said the federal statute ordering the president to make the annual proclamation serves no secular purpose, casts nonbelievers as outsiders and goes beyond the mere acknowledgment of religion to encouraging a practice best left to individual conscience.

Cobb said her ruling was not an attack on prayer but an effort to ensure religious liberty.

"The same law that prohibits the government from declaring a National Day of Prayer also prohibits it from declaring a National Day of Blasphemy," she said in the decision.

Judge Crabb said:

Recognizing the importance of prayer to many people does not mean the government may enact a statute in support of it, any more than the government may encourage citizens to fast during the month of Ramadan, attend a synagogue, purify themselves in a sweat lodge, or practice rune magic.