This is my first National Day of Reason as someone who would choose reason over prayer. I think this is one of those campaigns that is positive and hard to criticize.
The largest allegation could only be that prayer is more powerful than reason, which we simply cannot accept purely because we reason. Without reason no allegations can be proven true or false.
The main issue with the corresponding National Day of Prayer is that by passing a law that designates a day to prayer, it bucks at the very foundation of our government and is representative of our ability to waste resources on completely unneeded laws.
Firstly, it goes against the establishment clause in the constitution, which reads:
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; [...]
Now, the National Day of Prayer bill was carefully worded to not favor any specific religion. That would have been blatantly unconstitutional. Rather the interpretation of this clause can be that by making a law that shows favor to prayer, it is establishing religion as a whole as part of this country’s laws.
When interpreting a text, one must consider the authors, so let’s see a few quotes by our founding fathers:
Thomas Jefferson:
Fasting and prayer are religious exercises; the enjoining them an act of discipline. Every religious society has a right to determine for itself the time for these exercises, and the objects proper for them, according to their own particular tenets; and right can never be safer than in their hands, where the Constitution has deposited it. …civil powers alone have been given to the President of the United States and no authority to direct the religious exercises of his constituents.
James Madison:
There has been another deviation from the strict principle in the Executive Proclamations of fasts & festivals, so far, at least, as they have spoken the language of injunction, or have lost sight of the equality of all religious sects in the eye of the Constitution. Whilst I was honored with the Executive Trust I found it necessary on more than one occasion to follow the example of predecessors. But I was always careful to make the Proclamations absolutely indiscriminate, and merely recommendatory; or rather mere designations of a day, on which all who thought proper might unite in consecrating it to religious purposes, according to their own faith & forms. In this sense, I presume you reserve to the Govt. a right to appoint particular days for religious worship throughout the State, without any penal sanction enforcing the worship.
Combine this with the general notion of separation of church and state, as highlighted in many court cases and the infamous Treaty of Tripoli:
As the Government of the United States of America is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion; as it has in itself no character of enmity against the laws, religion, or tranquillity, of Mussulmen; and, as the said States never entered into any war, or act of hostility against any Mahometan nation, it is declared by the parties, that no pretext arising from religious opinions, shall ever produce an interruption of the harmony existing between the two countries.
It seems clear that the National Day of Prayer should never have been a law. I’m not against people praying. I’m not against a religious group organizing a National Day of Prayer. I’m just against it being codified by our congress and signed into law by our president.
Happy National Day of Reason.
