Did Rick Perry Err in Holding a Day of Prayer?

In reference to Governor Rick Perry (R-TX) calling for a day of prayer in an attempt to reverse America's decline, it seems that some people have a problem with it, as if it violates some sacred, yet non-existant "seperation of church and state" ideal here in America. For instance, Justin Vacula recently chimed in...

"Recently, the Freedom From Religion Foundation (FFRF) has called Perry's actions unconstitutional and has filed a lawsuit in Houston. The FFRF notes that the website for the prayer event is linked directly from the governor's website, the event gives “official [governmental] recognition to a devotional event,” “has no secular rationale” and gives “the appearance that the government prefers evangelical Christian religious beliefs over other religious beliefs and non-beliefs.” The FFRF also says that they were denied advertising space on billboards in the Houston area because of their criticism of the prayer event. Dan Barker, co-organizer of the FFRF, says, “Gov. Perry's distasteful use of his civil office to plan and dictate a religious course of action to 'all citizens' is deeply offensive to many citizens, as well as to our secular form of government.”

Jerry Newcombe, whose website that I link to over on the right and who authored the book The Book That Made America: How the Bible Formed our Nation (review here) recently sat down to the keyboard and offered up his thoughts on the contraversy...

"A law professor—-Erwin Chemerinsky, dean of the University of California at Irvine School of Law—-said the governor was violating the establishment clause: “The governor of the state of Texas should not be using his state email or his office to advance [the prayer event] because that’s advancing religion.”

Chemerinsky went on to highlight the idea that the event was not inclusive: “This is not only about prayer and involving God, but it’s Christian. So, for those of us who are not Christian, we are truly made to feel as outsiders relative to our own government, which is exactly what the establishment clause was meant to prevent.”

It was?

No, in the establishment clause, the founders intended to avoid creating a state church at the federal level. The Anglican Church, for example, was not to be the national church “by law established.” Nor the Presbyterian, nor the Quaker, and so on.

Meanwhile, several states had state churches, at the time of the adoption of the first amendment. These were never declared unconstitutional. They eventually withered away of their own accord—-the last to go being the Congregational Church, which was the established church of Massachusetts until 1833.

Declaring a day of prayer or thanksgiving (to God) has never been viewed—-until recently—-as constituting an “establishment of religion.”

During the American War for Independence, on at least fifteen separate occasions, Congress called for national days of prayer, humiliation, and fasting.

Furthermore, observe what an expert’s expert notes about this. David Barton, a walking encyclopedia on the spiritual heritage of America once told me, “Between 1633 and 1812, there were over 1700 prayer proclamations issued in the colonies, where the governor would call the state to an annual day of prayer and fasting, annual day of prayer of and thanksgiving.”

When the country first began under the Constitution, the Congress (many of the same men who would soon adopt the first amendment) called on President Washington to declare a day of Thanksgiving (to God—-these days, you have to clarify these things) for the ability to peaceably meet and fashion our own government.

So, on October 3, 1789, President Washington made a Thanksgiving Proclamation, in which he declared: “It is the duty of all nations to acknowledge the Providence of Almighty God, to obey His will, to be grateful for His benefits, and humbly to implore His protection and favor.”

It would seem to me that according to the law professor, the father of our country—-the very man who presided over the Constitutional convention—-was making an assault of the establishment clause."

It's understandable that one would not know any of these things because in our nation's public schools, these types of things are not being taught at all. We have a generation of largely ignorant people who simply accept revisionist history as gospel truth because they really don't know any better.

Critical thinking would seem to have gone to the wayside as Rick Perry is a state office holder and not elected to national office and that he couldn't establish a national religion if he even wanted to. Additionally, what kind religion was Perry trying to establish? Pentacostalism? Anabaptist? Church of Reason?

What Rick Perry did was entirely consistant with governors before him and in no way violated the Establishment Clause of the constitution.

The Myth of "Seperation of Church and State"

I came across a great article yesterday pertaing to the often misunderstood concept of "seperation of church and state" that many people have in reference to the foundational documents of the US. The author asks " How did it happen that our country became a land where Christian children are forbidden to use the word, “God”, in the public schools; public school students are forbidden to say prayers at football games; and religious speech is banned from the public square?". Indeed, there are many in this country (judges included) who are confused about the original intent of the framers of our constitution. The above, linked article is a 27 point presentation of what the intent of the Founding Fathers was and how it became corrupted down through the ages by judicial activism. We obviously don't have time to examine all of them in this entry, but here are a few of the key points raised. First, in relation to "Mother England"...

"The established religions in England, first Roman Catholic, and then Church of England, were supported by “tithes”—mandatory payments of a percentage of the produce of the land, payable by those living within the parish (regardless of their religious preferences) to the parish church, to support it and its clergy:

The payment of tithes was a cause of endless dispute between the tithe owners and the tithe payers - between clergy and parishioners - ... In addition, Quakers and other non-conformists objected to paying any tithes to support the established church. Almost every agricultural process and product attracted controversy over its tithe value. By the eighteenth century the complex legislation surrounding the tithe began to have a detrimental effect ... Tithing was seen as increasingly irrelevant to the needs of the community and the developing agricultural industry."

I think we could all agree that although there might have been good intentions, these sort of laws are generally bad idea. Why should one be forced to pay tithes to a religion? Even one with which you might disagree with some of it's founding doctrines? How did such a concept get warped into creating open hostility between government and religion and ne'er the two shall meet? The author explains the beginning of the end of cordial relations between the two..

" Now let us see how judges on the supreme Court re-defined “establishment of religion” in order to ban prayer in public schools. Engel v. Vitale (1962), is the case where six men outlawed prayer in the public schools. A public school board in New York had directed that the following prayer be said at school:

Almighty God, we acknowledge our dependence upon Thee, and we beg Thy blessings upon us, our parents, our teachers and our Country.

Any student was free to remain seated or leave the room, without any comments by the teacher one way or the other.

But six men on the supreme Court said this short, non-denominational and voluntary prayer constituted an “establishment of religion” in violation of the First Amendment! They (Hugo Black, Warren, Clark, Harlan, Brennan, and Douglas) admitted that allowing school children to say this prayer did not really “establish” a “religion”! They admitted that the prayer:

...does not amount to a total establishment of one particular religious sect to the exclusion of all others—that, indeed, the governmental endorsement of that prayer seems relatively insignificant when compared to the governmental encroachments upon religion which were commonplace 200 years ago…(p.436)

Douglas wrote in his concurring opinion:

I cannot say that to authorize this prayer is to establish a religion in the strictly historic meaning of those words. A religion is not established in the usual sense merely by letting those who choose to do so say the prayer that the public school teacher leads. (p.442)

But these six men didn’t want children praying in school. So, they just redefined “establishment of religion” to mean, “a religious activity”, “a prayer” (p.424), having public school children hear or recite a prayer that “somebody in government composed” (pp.425-427), “writing or sanctioning official prayers”(p.435), and “government endorsement of a prayer” (p.436).

These six men also admitted that even though no coercion was present, and even though the prayer was “denominationally neutral”, it still constituted an unlawful “establishment of religion”:

The Establishment Clause ... does not depend upon any showing of direct governmental compulsion and is violated by the enactment of laws which establish an official religion whether those laws operate directly to coerce nonobserving individuals or not. (p.430)

Douglas said in his concurring opinion:

There is no element of compulsion or coercion in New York’s regulation requiring that public schools be opened each day with the ... prayer (p.438); there is ... no effort at indoctrination, and no attempt at exposition ... New York’s prayer ... does not involve any element of proselytizing ... (p.439).

They thus redefined “established religion” to describe what the N.Y. public schools were doing so that they could then outlaw it. They don’t have that right! We have quoted Benjamin Franklin, Alexander Hamilton & James Madison as showing that the essence of an “established religion” is that the civil government selects a particular religious denomination (Roman Catholic or Church of England or Congregational or Presbyterian, etc.), and forces everybody to financially support that particular denomination with taxes or tithes."

Anyone is free to leave their thoughts on the matter here. One of the main reasons that Jefferson and Madison attended expressly Christian religious worship services inside of federal government buildings during their administrations and never spoke out against them was because attendence was compulsory and nobody was compelled to take part in them. That sort of mindset was closer to the friendly relationship between church and state that was much more idealized by the Founding Fathers than the open hostility expressed in these times IMO.