{"id":15399,"date":"2008-05-01T13:35:10","date_gmt":"2008-05-01T17:35:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/archives\/15399.html"},"modified":"2008-05-01T13:35:10","modified_gmt":"2008-05-01T17:35:10","slug":"the-president-wants-you-to-pray-today","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/the-president-wants-you-to-pray-today\/","title":{"rendered":"The president wants you to pray today"},"content":{"rendered":"

It’s not a widely recognized “holiday,” but today is the official<\/i> National Day of Prayer. (Ironically, the NDP and “Law Day<\/a>” fall on the same day.) The name is rather self-explanatory: It’s a day, set aside by law, in which the federal government encourages the nation to pray. And if you’re thinking it’s none of the government’s business whether you pray or not, we’re on the same page.<\/p>\n

The problem is obviously not with worship, but with government involvement. On principle alone, the idea that there’s an official “holiday” in which government promotes and encourages prayer is just odd in a country in which the state is supposed to be neutral when it comes to religion.<\/p>\n

For a while, I was keeping track of just how many days Bush set aside as official government prayer days. About two years ago, I counted 25<\/a> — more than any other president in American history — and I assume by now he’s topped 30. (If you search the White House website for “day of prayer,” you get nearly 70,000 results<\/a>.)<\/p>\n

There are a couple of angles to this. There’s an official National Day of Prayer Task Force, run by James Dobson’s wife, which has turned the “holiday” into an opportunity to promote politically-conservative, fundamentalist Christianity<\/a>. (Events sponsored by the NDP Task Force exclude religious minorities.)<\/p>\n

But I’m just as annoyed by hearing Bush talk about it. From a White House event<\/a> this morning:<\/p>\n

“The fidelity to faith has been present in our nation’s leaders from its very start. Upon assuming the presidency, George Washington took the oath of office and then added the famous plea, ‘So help me God.’ On John Adams’s first day in the White House, he wrote a prayer that is now etched in marble on the fireplace in the State Dining Room, and he prayed, ‘May none but honest and wise men ever rule under this roof.’ Now we’ll leave it to the historians to judge whether or not that happened throughout our history.” (Laughter.)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Hilarious. Would this be an inconvenient time to note that in the “good old days,” the notion of official, White House-endorsed government prayer days would have been ridiculous? That presidents such as Thomas Jefferson and James Madison opposed<\/a> national days of prayer? That this “holiday” didn’t exist until the red scare of the 1950s?
\n
\nThis comment from Bush this morning also struck me as odd:<\/p>\n

“And as we pray for God’s continued blessings on our country, I think it makes sense to hope that one day there may be a International Day of Prayer, that one day the national — (applause.) It will be a chance for people of faith around the world to stop at the same time to pause to praise an Almighty. It will be a time when we could prayer together for a world that sees the promise of the Psalms made real: ‘Your love is ever before me, and I walk continually in your truth.'”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Do we really<\/i> need a day on which everyone on the planet is encouraged to pray?<\/p>\n

For the truly devout, every day is a day of prayer and government proclamations are irrelevant and unnecessary. It’s a shame Bush doesn’t understand that. Then again, considering the way the president governs, more Americans are probably praying now than ever before.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It’s not a widely recognized “holiday,” but today is the official National Day of Prayer. (Ironically, the NDP and “Law Day” fall on the same day.) The name is rather self-explanatory: It’s a day, set aside by law, in which the federal government encourages the nation to pray. And if you’re thinking it’s none of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-15399","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15399","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15399"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15399\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15399"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15399"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15399"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}