U.S. District Judge Barbara Crabb has ruled that the National Day of Prayer is unconstitutional. Her ruling followed a lawsuit filed during the second term of the Bush administration by the Freedom From Religion Foundation, an organization of atheists and agnostics. The reason for her overruling: Oh, come on. You must already know. Does anyone need to tell you? That’s right! Separation between church and state!
Congress founded the Day of Prayer 1952 . A few decades later, in 1988, the first Thursday in May was designated as the time for presidents to call upon the nation to honor this day of humility.
How sad when judges are given the job of interpreting our constitution. I say sad because the constitution itself does not really charge them with any such responsibility. Judges are to enforce the constitution. They are not there to “tell us what it means.” The real irony here is that any 7th grader in Civics 101 probably understands the Establishment Clause better than half the judges who seem to be more interested in legislating from the bench than actually letting written words speak for themselves. The 7th grader doesn’t know any better. She just reads what the words honestly say:
“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof”
You’ll note that the phrase “separation between church and state” is not in there anywhere. Neither does it claim we cannot decide as a nation to pray. How does prayer establish a state church? The prayer is voluntary. If you don’t want to bow or kneel, no thought police are there to break your knees. If you do wish to petition God, nobody insists that you do so by embracing any particular Christian denomination. Nor do you even have to pray as a Christian at all. You are free to express your own religious convictions.
Secularists love to point to Muslim countries as an example of religion and government being too closely allied. This misleading illustration is part of an effort to quench, not Islam, but Christianity, as if America puts people in prison for not believing in Jesus.
Saudi Arabia recently issued a one-month jail sentence to a vacationing couple from Great Britain. Now why anyone would take his or her vacation in Saudi Arabia instead of going to Disney World, Yellowstone, the Swiss Alps, or Monte Carlo, I’m sure I don’t know. But they did choose Saudi Arabia and got arrested for kissing in public because such “public display of affection” violates Sharia Law. Does anything even remotely similar happen in the United States? How many people have been jailed for disobeying the Bible since American was founded? We keep hearing about the horrible dangers of not “correctly interpreting” our need to keep religion and government on opposite sides of the street. Since today’s elite sees itself as smarter than the American public and American government that navigated our country for over 200 years, I would ask for for an example of how the Christian influence on America has legally restrained any atheists, agnostics, or members of an alternative religion. I say this as one who himself was an atheist for many years. Never EVER did I feel my civil liberties were being violated due to school prayer or a Christian holiday! Nobody was twisting my arm to follow suit. I figured if these nuts wanted to pray to their God, let them. No skin off my teeth. And why did the very forefathers who wrote our constitution voice no objection to public prayer? For that matter, they didn’t seem to be losing a whole lot of sleep when the Bible was taught in our major colleges like Harvard.
Does the Freedom From Religion Foundation understand something about our constitution that Jefferson himself did not understand? Does U.S. District Judge Barbara Crabb have a handle on correctly deciphering the First Amendment that James Madison was incapable of seeing? Poor dumb framers of our constitution! They wrote this little document too complicated for even they, the authors, to figure out, knowing full well that the country would be incapable of comprehending the laws until some two hundred years later when people became more enlightened. How, oh how, did we ever get by without activist judges and atheists who know things about original intent that would have surprised every single original intender?
At first, prayer was taken out of the public schools. Then came the need to stop using the word Christmas as kids were instead given a “Winter Holiday.” For years, people have pointed to a rather blatant inconsistency, inasmuch as schools were taught a separation in the name of our government while the government itself did not demonstrate this same separation. Christmas is a national holiday. The National Day of Prayer is also an official practice. Meanwhile, both Congress and the Supreme Court open their sessions in prayer. So now they’re finally turning up the heat on the slow boiling frog. The banishing of our National Day of Prayer does take us down a more consistent road. I have no doubt that Christmas will be next, followed by the dismantling of government prayer sessions. Yes sir! That will be more consistent all right. It will also be completely and utterly unconstitutional. But it won’t matter. Truly reading the constitution has become old fashion. To get in step with modern times, the trick is to talk about the constitution without reading it. Alas, little Bridgett in 7th Grade is not the one reading our First Amendment any more. Oh sure, we taught her to read. And then we taught her to put reading aside and listen to Judge Barbara Crabb instead.
Do you hear rumblings in cemeteries across the land? No need to call Ghostbusters. It’s only our constitution framers turning in their graves.
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