A day to pray if we choose

Toward the end of March, with our nation at war, the Rev. Ignacio

Castuera, pastor of St. John’s United Methodist Church in Watts,

stood in the pulpit and told his congregation, “The most important

and first thing we can do as a religious people is to go to our knees

and pray.”

Thursday was a day that calls us, as a nation, to prayer. It was

our annual National Day of Prayer.

The tradition of setting aside a day for prayer is older than our

nation. In 1775, it was the Continental Congress that issued a

proclamation to designate “a time for prayer in forming a new

nation.”

In the early 1800s, President James Madison proclaimed a day of

prayer then later decided that such a proclamation implied and fed

the idea of a national religion.

Thomas Jefferson also opposed the practice.

“Fasting and prayer are religious exercises; the enjoining them an

act of discipline,” he wrote. “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.”

But Abraham Lincoln signed a Congressional resolution that called

for a day of fasting and prayer.

I’ve talked to people who agree with Madison and Jefferson. I know

one woman who gets worked up about the National Day of Prayer every

year. She tells me it violates her freedom not to practice religion.

If she could, she says, she would abolish the day, which she

thinks is unconstitutional.

I tell her no one is forcing her, or anyone else to pray. She

tells me it’s a slippery slope. I tell her it must be a long one.

The first day of May was designated as the National Day of Prayer

in 1988. But it was a unanimous act of Congress signed into law by

President Harry S. Truman in 1952 that first established the

observance.

Thursday was the 52nd annual National Day of Prayer. As far as I

know, no one has ever been arrested, fined, beaten or sued for not

taking part in it.

Last year, my prayer-phobic friend insisted the day was a

Republican contrivance. So, I dug up some quotes from Bill Clinton

for her.

Bill Clinton said, “I encourage the citizens of this great nation

to gather, each in his or her own manner, to recognize our blessings,

acknowledge our wrongs, to remember the needy, to seek guidance for

our challenging future and to give thanks for the abundance we have

enjoyed throughout our history.

“Though our citizens come from every nation on earth and observe

an extraordinary variety of religious faith and traditions,” he said,

“prayer remains at the heart of the American spirit.”

The day is not designed to favor or advance any particular faith

or religion. It is a day for all the people of the United States to

celebrate their faith, if they have faith, through prayer.

Ronald Reagan, in 1988, proclaimed, “On our National Day of

Prayer, then, we join together as people of many faiths to petition

God to show us his mercy and his love, to heal our weariness and

uphold our hope, that we might live ever mindful of his justice and

thankful for His blessing.”

Just last year, President Bush proclaimed, “The Congress ... has

called on our citizens to reaffirm the role of prayer in our society

and to honor the religious diversity our freedom permits by

recognizing annually a National Day of Prayer.”

The day is nonpartisan. Every year, our leader in the White House

issues a proclamation for the day.

The day is a chance to exercise our constitutional rights to

freedom of speech and practice of religion, freedoms held by every

citizen. The day does not transgress those rights: It fulfills them.

Last year, an estimated 40,000 events were held nationwide to

commemorate the day. Some were prayer breakfasts, some concerts, some

rallies, some vigils. Some were marathon Bible readings.

Some gatherings were so large they were held in sports stadiums.

In other places, students gathered around school flagpoles to pray.

Some people gathered in twos and threes in living rooms or over

coffee.

Jesus taught that we “always ought to pray and not lose heart”

(Luke 18:1).

I do my best to trust him on that. On Thursday, I gathered with

others who pray and remembered what Jesus said about prayer. I

remembered what the Rev. Castuera said, too.

And I said, “Amen.”

* MICHELE MARR is a freelance writer. She can be reached at

[email protected].