That is
the text of a law which will once again be rearing its ugly head tomorrow.
Here’s another law.
“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of
religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of
speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and
to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”
Do you see a conflict? I sure do. The national Day of
Prayer very clearly violates the First Amendment to the Constitution (that’s
the second quote there, for those who might be unfamiliar).
Yes, I am well aware that this law withstood a
Constitutional challenge in the courts. Of course, it did so not by ruling
whether it violated the law, but by ruling that the plaintiffs didn’t have
standing to sue because it didn’t cause concrete harm. Essentially, the court
decided that officially alienating anybody whose religious beliefs do not
include “turning to God in prayer and meditation,” does not constitute a harm
done to them by the government. In other words, laws that clearly violate the
constitution are allowable as long as they don’t cause harm (or the harm is
sufficiently nebulous to hand-wave away). But the fact remains that this is a
law “respecting an establishment of religion.”
Not only
that, it really is a Christian-specific law if you look at the wording. Only
Christians use “God” as if it were a name – the Jewish faith prefers not to
write the word at all, Muslim faiths tend to use the title “Allah,” (though the meaning is essentially the same), and of
course many non-Abrahamic religions only use it in the lower-case sense as a
descriptor. Wording meant to be inclusive of all religious people would have
been something like “their god or gods,” rather than “God.” The wording that exists would
only be used by someone ignorant of the fact that other religious traditions
even exist, or deliberately singling out for preference the tradition that uses
it. Given how often issues of religious freedom get put up in front of
legislators, it’s hard to make the argument that ignorance is the source of the
wording. And even if you could make that argument, it still wouldn’t be a good
one for keeping the law as-is.
The
reference to churches (and only churches, with no mention of synagogues,
temples, mosques, lodges, etc.) in the law is another clue to the intent. There
is absolutely no need to reference a place
for “prayer and meditation” in the law at all. If all you wanted to do was
encourage people to pray (or meditate) together or individually, that’s pretty
much all you need to say. Referencing only the location of a specific form of
religious service implies that it is that form you wish to encourage.
But even
if you somehow stretch the bounds of linguistic interpretation to pretend that
the wording is inclusive of all religious faiths, it is not inclusive of all religious positions. Specifically, it excludes
those whose religious position is “none,” or whose religious faith does not
include a god at whom to direct prayers (for example, deists). I have heard it
argued that the inclusion of the word “meditation” allays this objection,
because meditation can be performed in a nonreligious context. But go look at
the wording again. It does not say for people to meditate. It says for them to “turn
to God in prayer and meditation.” If you do not have a god to meditate on, this
is clearly a ridiculous instruction and very clearly excludes your position.
The
National Day of Prayer clearly establishes a state position that a god exists
and ought to be prayed to. It strongly implies that the god that exists and
ought to be prayed to is the Christian one. That is an establishment of religion. The fact that it’s one that can be
freely ignored (and the legal and linguistic contortions that are used to keep
it on the books render its clear intent farcical) doesn’t change that one bit.
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