National Day of Prayer | Sublime to the ridiculous

Prayer

Last Thursday, May 6th, was the National Day of Prayer, as designated by the US Congress, when people are asked to “turn to God in prayer and meditation”. The law formalizing its annual observance was enacted in 1952, but has been challenged in court and a federal judge in Wisconsin has recently declared the prayer day unconstitutional.

“It goes beyond mere ‘acknowledgment’ of religion because its sole purpose is to encourage all citizens to engage in prayer, an inherently religious exercise that serves no secular function,” U.S. District Judge Barbara Crabb said in her April 15 ruling.

The judge stayed her ruling until higher courts review it, allowing President Obama — a defendant in the lawsuit by a group of atheists and agnostics — to issue the annual prayer proclamation today as his lawyers work on an appeal to a federal court panel in Chicago.

Obama contends the day of prayer is a constitutionally permitted “acknowledgment of the role of religion in American life.”

[….]

Presidents have periodically called the nation to prayer since George Washington’s Thanksgiving Day proclamation in 1789.

But Crabb said the current observance is different in important ways: It was enacted by Congress in a law that had strong sectarian roots, at the close of a six-week Washington, D.C., crusade by evangelist Billy Graham.

The judge rejected arguments that the law was validly grounded on the tradition Washington established.

Tradition doesn’t excuse violating the Constitution, Crabb said.

In any event, she said, people are less likely to see a president’s personal proclamation as an official endorsement of religion than they are “a statute encouraging all citizens to pray.”

The judge said: “The statute does not use prayer to further a secular purpose. It endorses prayer for its own sake.”

The Pentagon had invited a private national evangelical group, the National Day of Prayer Task Force, of which (Franklin) Graham is 2010 honorary chairman, to lead an official prayer service there. The prayers are for the U.S. military; Graham’s son is on his fourth tour in Afghanistan.

Franklin Graham - "my God is better than yours!"

Meanwhile Graham, in an interview to the USA Today, was busy deriding other religions, as he was reiterating his belief that “Muslims do not worship the same ‘God the Father’ I worship.” While he was at it, he laughed at Hinduism’s many manifestations of God: “No elephant with 100 arms can do anything for me. None of their 9,000 gods is going to lead me to salvation.

“We are fooling ourselves if we think we can have some big kumbaya service and all hold hands and it’s all going to get better in this world. It’s not going to get better,” Graham said.

The army promplty rescinded their invitation to Graham. “We’re an all-inclusive military,” Collins (army spokesman) said. “We honor all faiths. … Our message to our service and civilian work force is about the need for diversity and appreciation of all faiths.”

Graham of course wasn’t going to let a bunch of secular infidels outshine the prominence of a man-made “Prayer day” that he felt had to exclusively be given to his God. So, he held his own “vigil” at the Pentagon parking lot. After all, someone had to be there on the sacred Prayer day of May 6th to stand up for God.. his God..

Kathleen Parker - 2010 Pulitzer Prize Winner

Kathleen Parker’s nationally syndicated opinion column features in Washington Post and I really enjoy reading it. She also just recently won the 2010 Pulitzer Prize for her work. Here are some snippets from her latest column on this incident..

It doesn’t matter where one prays, right? All prayers lead to heaven. Or do they?

Not if you’re Graham, who lost his place at the Pentagon altar after he mocked other religions, specifically Islam and Hinduism. A plea to President Obama to reinstate him apparently fell on pitiless ears.

Graham’s offense was expressing his belief that only Christians have God’s ear, that Islam is evil, and that Muslims and Hindus don’t pray to the same God he does.

[….]

Graham isn’t alone in his views. A survey of 1,000 Protestant pastors, conducted by an evangelical polling firm, found that 47 percent agree that Islam is “a very evil and a very wicked religion.” But such opinions may be confined mostly to an older generation. Evangelicals under 30 believe that there are many ways to God, not just through Jesus.

[….]

Barbara Bradley Hagerty, the award-winning National Public Radio religion reporter, participated in a peyote ceremony in Arizona, meditated while wearing a brain scanner at the University of Wisconsin and donned a “God helmet” in a neuroscientist’s lab in Canada in her quest to discover the secrets of prayer and, possibly, proof of God.

In her book, “Fingerprints of God,” Hagerty tries to answer a question that has plagued her for years: Is there more than this? She couldn’t accept mainstream science’s answer that we are “a collection of molecules with no greater purpose than to eke out a few decades.” Instead, she sought out spiritual virtuosos (people who practice prayer, religiously), as well as neurologists, geneticists, physicists and medical researchers who are using the newest tools of science to discern the circumstantial evidence of God.

Her research led to some startling conclusions that have caused no small amount of Sturm und Drang among those who believe theirs is the one true way. She found that whether one is a Sikh, a Catholic nun, a Buddhist monk or a Sufi Muslim, the brain reacts to focused prayer and meditation much in the same way. The same parts light up and the same parts go dark during deep meditation.

[….]

As the politics of God, religion, state and its people rages on, and the presidents and their men do their funny tight rope walk between secularism and evangelic Christian populism in America, I am more outraged at government’s half-ass attempt at forcing spirituality on their citizens. I was pissed that not only was I completely unaware that May 6th was the National Day of Prayer, but I was also working my rear end off until very late on that night. Beyond just formalizing this day as a National Prayer Day, why couldn’t the law extend it a bit further and make it a National Holiday? How can Columbus Day be a federal holiday and the Prayer Day not? Doesn’t God deserve better than the guy who leaves many Americans wondering whether to be worshiped as a hero or denounced as a murderer? I think He deserves more than that, perhaps two days off, sort of like Thanksgiving. Besides, Franklin Graham can focus on his exclusive eternal salvation on day 1 and channel his energies on day 2 at mocking others who might try to find peace in praying to the Allah or the Buddha or that God with 100 hands that I grew up praying to. Plus, I need to catch up on several episodes of Californication that I missed what with being overworked and all.